Question

Pick 2 of the 6 key elements of information science outlined on page 58 (Debons, week 2), try to think of an example of an information system (or branch of the information science discipline) that addresses that feature.

Answer 1

While information itself is as old as time, social informatics, as a discipline, is a relatively

newer movement. In the postmodern age where we as a global information society consume and

generate information on an astronomical scale, social informatics is the discipline of information

sciences that examines the ways that human factors and practices influence information

technologies and the

uses and ramifications of information in society

. With that said, social

informatics addresses the first key point of information science which is “the behavior of people

as generators, sources, recipients, and users of information, and as channel agents.”

Since the dawn of society, librarianship has always dealt with the methodical organization

of all kinds of information including books, historical documents, records, etc for the purpose of

making information accessible to the general public. It is part of the professions in the library

sciences to acquire, catalog, manage, and circulate information materials and in doing so, it

addresses the third point of information science: “the semantic organization of messages and of

channels that facilitate their identification by sources and recipients