Information and the Information Professions

""Information" is a word that is much used and discussed, but with little agreement on its meaning. Yet it forms the professional focus and intellectual content of numerous disciplines and professions-information science, knowledge management, social studies of information, digital humanities, biomedical informatics, library science, records management, information systems, and dozens more. In this collection of eighteen professional papers and other texts by Marcia Bates, this pivotal concept is addressed in depth, and its relation to the information professions developed and discussed. Several professional and disciplinary issues are considered, including definitions of the fields, research paradigms and methodologies, the role of the doctorate in a profession, and the major research content areas of the several fields, with special attention to information science. Finally, the distinctive experience of being a woman graduate student and professor, when that was still rare in American universities, is described"--