Information Science Details

Information science is a practice dealing with the effective storage, retrieval, and use of information. Information science is centered more around the manipulation of information rather than the process of knowing information. It enables the transmission of information from one corner of the world to another.

Information science enables the study of the vast amounts of information at our disposal. It allows people to make sense of information that sometimes might not be readable or understandable in its original form. Information science also involves deep analysis of the information at hand to study its properties and behavior. Informatics is often referred to as a synonym for information science. The concept of informatics was introduced by A. I. Mikhailov of the Soviet Union. Informatics was developed and viewed as a means to study and analyze scientific information.

From ancient times, the travel of information has required the existence of some storage medium. This medium was referred to as a document (hence, the term documentation). Throughout the 20th century, documentation emerged as the primary means for the transfer of information. Around this time, periodicals and journals were introduced for the publication of scientific reports and data.

Example of Information Science

Information access is an example of the application of information science. It is an area of research that is developed to automate the process of retrieval of large amounts of unclassified data. Information access finds uses in fields of computer science and data analytics where data analysis tools are devised to classify large amounts of data to extract vital information from them. Some of the common tasks arising from information access include data mining, exploratory data analysis, machine translation, text mining, content retrieval, etc.

Another example of information science is information architecture. This field of information science focuses on the art and science of organizing and labeling data and its sources in the digital world. Websites, journals, and blogs are the sources of data in the digital world. Information architecture involves the labeling of these data sources to support ease of use. Some of the common tasks to emerge out of this field of information science include library management and database development and maintenance.

The application of information science to retrieve information from a variety of sources is called information retrieval. This field of information science focuses on searching documents, journals, blogs, books, and the World Wide Web to retrieve the required information. Search engines like Google, Bing, etc. are the most commonly found information retrieval tools. Information retrieval is also applied in the application software used in many universities and schools.

Significance of Information Science

The field of information science has undergone major revolutions due to the advent of the internet and the usage of social media. Social media creates a platform for the rapid transmission of information all over the world. The internet has changed the way we view, create, and store information. The real-time availability and transmission of information are now possible through the internet.

In an increasingly mobile-oriented world, social media has immense power to store, create, and transmit news. All major news providers and outlets have a huge presence on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc. This means that the audience for consuming news has increased tenfold. This also means that the information flows through the public at a much faster rate.

Furthermore, social media has the power to facilitate topics and create debates on the most relevant information. News outlets can gauge what kind of news creates the most impact on the public. Classifying the reaction of particular news from various sections of the population is also now possible through social media. This enables news outlets to provide targeted information based on public demand.