Before I do that, I want to acknowledge an intellectual debt by paying homage to one of the great thinkers and visionaries of our field, Calvin Mooers. After his paper on the nature of descriptors and the structure of classification, a small group of us had an hour-long discussion energized by his intellectual spark. The next twenty years in information retrieval could still be published today under the same title. I also thank my students who, through their questions and discussions, have contributed much to sharpening my thinking. I will begin my remarks with my definition of information science.
Information science is concerned with both research and design.
It conducts research into the nature of information, its creation, organization, use, and impact. It studies information needs and the interaction between people and information. It combines conceptual structures with appropriate technology in the design of systems for information sharing, retrieval, and access, as well as information assimilation, processing, and learning. As it incorporates principles and results from these disciplines, information science analyzes them for commonalities, derives generalizations, advances the thinking, and thus creates a new synthesis. User models and knowledge representation, like a binary star, revolve around each other and depend on each other.