Broad and visionary. Commentary on Allen Kent (1977) Information Science.

As I write, we are commemorating Allen Kent's long and productive life (19212014), after his recent death (Williams, 2014). He was a pioneer in many aspects of library and information science (LIS), and yet, as I read his 1977 article, there is not much in it that has become ancient, irrelevant history. The questions he discusses are still alive in our discipline in 2014, whether we call it LIS, information science, information studies, or an "iSchool education."Allen Kent was a manager, professor, researcher, teacher, an editor. It was this last function that I know best, because, as Editor-in-Chief (with Mary N. Maack as Co-Editor), of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Ed., published in 2010, I became very familiar with his work as Chief Editor of the first edition of that same encyclopedia. I reviewed every volume and article of the earlier edition, which, with updates to the original 33-volume encyclopedia, numbered a total of 73 volumes by the time the last volume was published in 2003, when the second edition was initiated under the Editorship of Miriam Drake.His conception of the subject matter of LIS was very broad and visionary; so much so that we included 37 "ELIS Classics" in the third edition, that is, entries written for earlier editions that we felt should not be lost to current encyclopedia readers. These included articles as varied as the following:* "Information Retrieval Experimenta - tion" by pioneering information science researcher Jean Tague-Sutcliffe.* "Private Presses and Fine Printing" by book expert Roderick Cave.* "Automation of Library and Informa - tion Services in China to 1990" by Sharon Chien Lin-a rare Englishlanguage historical record of Chinese information history.* "Library College: A Prototype for a Universal Higher Education" by Louis Shores. The library college was once a popular concept in academic librarianship that should not be lost to our current generation's understanding.In addition, Kent was prescient in identifying an area of historical and social research in information that is still underdeveloped: the history and social development of whole disciplinary literatures, with articles titled "Economics Literature: History," "Business Literature: History," and so on.Other entries drawn from his first edition addressed information technologies that are little discussed today, but which had important roles in the development of modern information technology: "Hypertext and Hypercard: Early Developments," "CD-ROM in Libraries" (updated to the present in the third edition by the original author), and "Word Processing: Early History."The primary issue that Kent deals with in his 1977 article is one that has run through the discourse of LIS during my entire experience of the field, continuing to today. This is the conflict/debate between libraries on the one hand and information technology on the other, a humanistic library science vs. a technical information science. I have seen librarians spit out the word "information" as though it were repellent, and I have seen technical types ignore anything coming from the library world out of the ignorant assumption that nothing librarians know has any relevance in the digital world of today. …