InSS 601 Foundations of Information

Science & Systems

Instructor: Getachew Hailemariam (Ph.D.)

1st Semester AY 2024/25

AAU

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 Course objectives
At the end of the module students are expected to
– Understand the foundation concepts, theories, research and methodologies
of Information Systems and Information Science ;
– Identify the key features and contributions of the core areas of
specializations of Information Science and Systems;
– Apply the concepts, theories and methodologies of Information Science
and Systems in analyzing and understanding information problems;
– Identify the different core issues and tools in developing and
implementing successful information systems;
– Identify and appreciate key trends & emerging issue
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in Information Systems discipline.
 Content

1. Introduction to Information Science and Systems

1.1.Information Science and Information Systems
2. Introduction to IR and Language Technologies
3. Knowledge Management and Systems
4. Information Systems User and Use issues
5. Information Systems and Cyber security issues
6. Emerging topics and trends Information Systems

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 Readings
• There are no standard text books for this course;
however, You will be provided adequate reading
materials for each chapter of the module as the course
proceeds.

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 Instructional Methods

The course will be delivered through

– Lectures
– Individual/Group Article review assignments
– Class presentation and participation.

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 Assessment
40%: Final Exam;
15% short test;
40%: Individual (Article Review - report and
presentation);
5%: Class participation & Attend

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 1.Introduction to Information Science
and Systems

• Although the two disciplines have so many

commonalities, they are distinct when it comes
to their area of focus and origin

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 Information Sys....
• Prior to the 1960s, the domain discipline that
deals with collection, storage, and retrieval of
information belonged to the field of
Documentation/ library science (Davies 1989).

• At a time when data was not digitized, IS was

used to organize the library and provide
service to users

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 Information Sys....
• Thus, it will not be a surprise to see today that
most IS schools have their origin, mainly in
historical terms, from the library science
discipline.

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 1.1.1. Information Systems origin as a
discipline and profession
• The IS discipline is characterized as
multidisciplinary and pluralistic in its
approaches (Fitzgerald & Adam, 1996;
Checkland & Holwell, 1998; Ellis et al., 1999)
• It has drawn concepts from many other
disciplines to address issues that reflect the
centrality of IT in varied socio-economic
contexts
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 Information Sys.....
• The concept of IS rapidly evolved with
computer applications that automated routine,
repetitive tasks,
• Accordingly, IS as a field of academic study
began in the 1960s (Topi et al 2010), a few
years after the first use of computers for
transaction processing and reporting by
organizations
• This equated IS as a data processing system
(closed model) 11
 Information Sys.....

• Later on with the development of computer

and communication technologies, particularly
in the 1980s and 1990s, the organizational use
of information technology (internal &
external) enabled people in organizations to
perform work with greater effectiveness and
efficiency.

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 Information Sys.
• Thus, the focus of the IS discipline also turned
towards enhancing business in organizations
(Scime, Andoh-Baidoo, Bush, & Osatuyi 2009).

• This extended the use of information processing

and communication technology to operational
processes, project management, decision
support, and enterprise and industry strategy

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 Information Sys....
• In the academic field, IS grew in scope and
depth and begun to evolve in management
and business studies with the popular label of
Management IS (MIS).
• Therefore, having existed well before the
advent of computers, IS started to bloom again
as a new discipline with the widespread use of
computers

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 Information Sys..
• With the advent of organization wide IS such
as groupware and Internet based systems that
mediate communications, IS has become a
socio-technical system

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 Evolution of IS

• Tool to automate clerical tasks

• supporting tool to facilitate management in
decision making
• management support to help situate
organizations in a competitive position
• strategic in today's organizations and
executives speak of the importance of aligning
their business strategy with IS strategy
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 1.1.2. Disciplines Contributed to IS
• Computer Science
• Cognitive Psychology & Social Psychology
• Sociology
• Management
• Economics
• Library Science
• Communication studies etc

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IS positions in relation to other
domains

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 1.1.3.Key issues and research Agendas

• What is an Information System and what

does the field of IS comprise?
• What are IS research issues and what methods of
inquiry are appropriate for them?
• How emerging technologies impact IS research and
practice

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Research perspectives in information systems
implementation
• Technical implementation (DeMarco 1978; Gane and Sarson
1979)
• Socio-technical or Socio-material system (Munford, 2006)
• Planned change models of Lewin and Schein (Alter and
Ginzberg 1978; Keen and Scott‐Morton 1978)
• Political theories (Wilensky 1967; Bardach 1977; Keen 1981;
Newman and Rosenberg 1985)
• Action learning (Argyris and Schon 1978; Kolb 1984;
Heiskanen 1994)
• Marxist economic theory (Nygaard 1975; Sandberg 1985)
• Institutional economics (Alchian and Demsetz 1972;
Williamson 1975; Kemerer 1992; Heikkila 1995)
 The diversity brought about some confusions and advantages as well 20
 1.1.4.IS Profession

• Information Systems has become an attractive

professional field
• High job advertisement and sound industry positions
• Growing number of IS courses and departments/schools
that include IS in the title, IS academic positions,
research and professional journals in IS, international
and national IS associations (eg. AIS, UKAIS,) and
conferences (eg. ICIS, ECIS, PACIS, AMCIS) etc

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1.1.5.Conceptual mapping of the
IS Discipline

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Information Systems as a discipline: Three conditions

1. Presence of people who consider

themselves as IS professionals
2. Existence of Professional Associations
3. Availability of publications

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 1.2. Information Science
 a hybrid of many fields of inquiry. It is a discipline
that has adapted its content and methodologies from a
wide range of disciplines, the major ones of which
are:
– Philosophy
– Mathematics (Statistics)
– Computational Linguistics
– Behavioral Science (particularly cognitive sciences)
– Computer Science
– Communication Science (including Telecoms)
– Library Science
– Management

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 Definitions
Various definition with varied viewpoints are provided.
The following provide general ideas of the subject:-
1. Information science is the science and practice dealing
with the effective collection, storage, retrieval and use
of information.
 It is concerned with recordable information and knowledge,
and the technologies and related services that facilitate their
management and use (Borko, 1968; Saracevic, 2010).

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 Definitions....
2. A multidisciplinary field of study, involving several
forms of knowledge, given coherence by a focus on
the central concept of human recorded information
(Bates, 1999).
 a field of study focused on a topic or subject of
interest, using any of the forms of knowledge –
sociological, mathematical, philosophical etc. (Hirst,
1974).

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 Definitions....

3. Information science can best be understood as

a field of study, with human recorded
information as its concern, focusing on the
components of the communication chain,
studied through the perspective of domain
analysis (Robinson, 2009).
– communication chain of recorded information: from its
creation, through dissemination, indexing and retrieval,
use, and archiving or disposal.

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 Definition ....

 The third definition implies that the concerns

of information science lies on the details of the
chain, and the ways in which it is being
changed by new technologies

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 History of information science

• Information science first became known as a

discipline during the 1950s
• The terms ‘information science’ and ‘information
scientist’ were first used by Jason Farradane in the
mid-1950s (Shapiro, 1995).
• Farradane pioneered the teaching of information
science as a distinct subject, and was among those
who argued for a ‘true science of information’, along
the lines of the natural sciences (Farradane, 1976;
Bawden, 2008).
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 History......
• Although there have been librarians and
archivists from the earliest days of writing and
recorded information, formal information
professions and disciplines came into
existence only in the 19th century
• The German librarian Martin Schrettinger used the
term bibliothekswissenschaft, which may be
reasonably translated ‘library science’, in 1808, to
encompass the tasks of cataloguing, classification,
shelf arrangement and library management.
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 History...
• Information science per se stems from the
communications revolution of the 19th century
• to deal with the large volumes of literature, and
scientific and technical literature in particular, led to
the emergence in the early 20th century of the
documentation movement, pioneered by Paul Otlet,
which espoused a ‘scientific’ approach to the storage
and retrieval of recorded information

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 History.....
• The increased awareness of technical information as
a resource for science based industries led to the
establishment of special libraries, and to the idea of
‘Information work’ (IW) as distinct from
librarianship
• Compared with traditional libraries, (IW) had a much
more proactive role, a strong subject focus, and an
interest in all forms of information, not just formally
published documents(Ditmas, 1950)

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 History....
• The need to deal with the ‘information explosion’,
the very rapid expansion in publications of all kinds
dealing particularly with scientific and technical
information during and after the 1939–45 war, was
discussed at the influential 1948 Royal Society
Conference on scientific information.

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 History...
• The growing application of new technologies to information
handling, initially mechanized documentation techniques, and
then the digital computer, provided the technological
background for the new science (Black, 2007).
Examples of Library automation software currently available

N.o Description
1. Destiny Library Manager
2. Libero LMS
3. Oliver v5
4. SLiMS
5. CodeAchi Library Management System
6. Soutron
7. Koha
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 History...
 Vannevar Bush’s Memex concept, combined with Shannon
and Weaver’s Mathematical Theory of Communication,
and the new ‘informetrics’ laws, such as Bradford’s law of
scattering paved the way for scientific approach to
information management

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 History....
– Mathematical Theory of Communication
(Claude Shannon)
– Concerned with the transmission of electrical
signals over wires
– How do we send information quickly and reliably?

 Bradford’s law, the law of scattering articles over

periodicals/journals: Identification core productive
journals on a particular discipline

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 History....
Professionalization
• The establishment of professional body, International
Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) in 1895
by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine
• Later, American Society for Information Science was
established in 1968. The International Federation of Library
Associations (IFLA)
• International Federation for Information Processing -
IFIP
• Journals like, Journal of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology started
• Modern information science education began in 1961, when
Jason Farradane set up an evening course in ‘collecting and
communicating scientific knowledge’
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 Constituents and core

• Information science core has been argued to comprise a

variety of topics such as:-
– Human-computer interaction
– Information literacy
– Information management,
– Documentation
– Library management
– Knowledge management
– Information organization
– Information society studies
– Bibliometrics,
– Information seeking, and
– Information retrieval 38
 Overlaps with other disciplines and
professions.
As a meta-discipline, Information Science has
evident overlap in terms of common interests and
concepts:
1. Collection overlap: Library & Documentation
2. Technology overlap: Computer Science & Information systems,
Information retrieval and digital libraries, repositories etc.
3. Social overlap: information society and social informatics studies
4. Communication overlap: technical communication, the writing of
abstracts, translation, information design, publishing etc

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 Overlap....

5. Management and policy overlap: naturally

overlap with knowledge management, business
intelligence and other ‘general’ management and
policy-making areas

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 The uniqueness of information science

1. the uniqueness of information science lies in its

concern for all aspects of the communication
chain
(Creation, through dissemination, indexing and
retrieval, use, and archiving or disposal.)
2. Research Questions addressed and problems to
be solved

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 Big questions’ proposed
for the information sciences
1.What are the features and laws of the recorded-
information universe? (physical)
2.How do people relate to, seek, and use information?
(Social)
3.How can access to recorded information be made
most rapid and effective? (Design)

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Emerging field: Data Science vs Information
Science
• Information Science: the design of practices
for storing and retrieving information
• Deals with the genesis, flow, use, and
preservation of information
• Data Science: Actionable knowledge
discovered from data
• Involves AI, machine learning, predictive
models, analytics etc
•
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 Information Systems vs. Information Science
• Information systems involves designing the actual systems to gather,
• Information science is
process, store, share & use information.
• IS experts must understand both technical & organizational factors, & must
concerned with the analysis,
collection, classification,
be able to help an organization determine how information & technology-
manipulation, storage, retrieval,
enabled business processes can provide a foundation for superior sharing and dissemination of
organizational performance. information.
• IS serves as a bridge between the technical and management communities

within an organization.
– What information does the enterprise need? Is it presented to them in

ways that permit them to use it readily?

– Is the organization structured to be able to use technology

effectively?
– Are the business processes of the organization well designed?
– Do they use the opportunities created by IT fully? Does the

organization use the communication and collaboration capabilities of

ITs appropriately?
– Is the organization capable of adapting quickly enough to changing

external circumstances?
– Deals with Hardware, Software, Database, People, Processes, and

security
 Reading Assignment
• Role and value of information
• Nature and property of information
• Berlo’s model of communication

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