Information Science – Information Systems

Articles from this series

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1. Information science - Introduction
2. Information science – Uniqueness and essential questions
3. Information science – Philosophical approaches
4. Information science – Paradigms
5. Information science – Epistemologies
6. Information science – What is information?
7. Information science - Terminology (Knowledge, Document)
8. Information science - Terminology (Collections, Databases, Relevance)
9. Information science – Domain
10. Information science – Organisations of information

Main source

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Introduction to Information Science - DAVID BAWDEN and LYN ROBINSON

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Information systems

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Since the „information explosion“ (PCs, internet and stuff), the way the information systems are created has greatly changed. They used to be just for the “technical people”, but because of several reasons, which led to origination of “new age” information systems, that has changed.

Yet again, like in every other aspect of Information science, the clash between realism and constructivism (explained in article “Philosophical approaches”) is real. Is there objective truth how information systems should be constructed, or is our only way the (temporarily) futile try to understand how our brains work and what they need? Well I’ve sad it before and I’ll say it now again – just fucking do both Information science…pretty please?

Whether the “information architects” choose 0, or 1, or both, the aim has crystalized over the years. Information systems have to be interactive and they should be user-friendly. The information systems were born due to “information anxiety”. Basically people were realizing that the information is there, within reach, just few steps away, yet most of the people were totally illiterate (from the technical point of view). Funny fact is that the first “information architect” was a guy who actually was a regular architect (Saul Wurman was his name if anyone was interested). I guess it gave him the experience of…well… mentally constructing stuff. I’m getting a bit lost though. So the biggest goal of information system is to deal with this “information anxiety”, or in other words, to provide the information to the users that want/need it. There is tool that is especially useful when dealing with such a problem.

Human computer interaction

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HCI is the field that studies how human beings communicate with computers. The main studied aspect is the design and interface of the system. The “means of gathering information” is really crafty here. Variety of techniques is being used, from the oldschool interviews and questioners, up to using motion sensors. The problem is that the information systems have SO MUCH DATA that needs to be transferred to you. How to do it effectively? Visualisation is the way. It’s our vision (not necessarily connected to any text) that perceive the vast majority of incoming information. HCI studies, what is the best way how to transmit the enormous data effectively through visual representations and effective interface into our minds and how humans react to that.

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