Discipline Formation and the Field of Information

The field of information as expressed in the iSchool Caucus is in many respects a conglomeration of disparate elements. It includes, for example, elements of several major traditions of information organization (commonly expressed as service professions) and the social institutional ties and contexts that some of them entail. In addition the field has also gathered under its umbrella an impressive array of such other elements as aspects of cognitive studies, social studies of the users and use of information, studies and services related to the Internet and World Wide Web, digital libraries and other systems that have no particular social institutional setting, digitization initiatives, not least among which are growing museum and digital archives movements, studies related to information systems of all kinds (e.g., interface design, usability testing, security), social issues of information property and rights, and the entire array of informatics initiatives, to name only some of the whole. Within this enlarged context, one issue of significance is the role of discipline formation, where the latter refers to efforts to identify a fundamental phenomenon related to larger core professional activities and explain aspects of that phenomenon through scientific methodology and objectivity. The purpose of this paper is to use two examples of discipline formation within traditions of information organization (Bibliography and Computerized information storage and retrieval) as a basis for enriching and provoking our contemporary understanding of discipline formation within the field of information. As such, it focuses on the fourth review criterion of the iSchool Caucus program: ???develops intellectual geographies in which attendees can learn about intellectual domains not their own but part of the multi-disciplinary iSchool space.??