Information Science is a difficult field of studies to interpret, let alone describe. Because it is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the collection, classification, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information, it fits into a categories of most subjects. The fact that Information Science is often merged with library science departments in most North American institutions makes it even more confusing. Because of the multi-disciplinary nature of the field, there has been no authoritative figures that can be pinpointed as the progenitors of IS. However, there are in fact a number of key scholars and practitioners that are key builders that form the discipline.
SR Ranganathan
Originally a mathematician who taught at the University of Madras in India, Ranganathan later became a librarian and went overseas to Britain to study library science. Ranganathan's greatest achievements to information science are the colon classification system (CC) and the five laws of library science. Inspired by lego-like Meccano blocks in a toy store, Ranganathan's invention of the CC system challenged the dominance of the Dewey Decimal Classification system. In fact, Google's algorithm is inspired by the colon classification structure.
Edgar Codd
Known to be the originator of the modern database, Codd came up with an influential research paper which outlined relational databases. During his time as a mathematical programmer, he published a paper called"A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in 1970 which established the field of database programming. Using both relational calculus and relational algebra, relational databases eventually extended to SQL programming.
Peter Morville
One of the authorsof Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Morville is often considered the father of information architecture. Using his knowledge of library science, Morville applied topics such as indexing, classification, and web design to create entirely new topics such as user experience design, findability and way finding.
Vannevar Bush
In his article, As We May Think Bush envisioned a microfilm-based device called the Memex which would store all of an individual's books, records, and communications. Based on automated mechanization, so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility, Bush's idea might seem archaic and anachronistic in current times. Nonetheless, the Memex inspired the development of hypertext technology.
Tim Berners-Lee
Regarded widely as the father of the Internet, in 1980 Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.
Claude Shannon
American electronic engineer and mathematician who is often regarded as having founded information theory, Shannon established the theory with his landmark paper published in 1948 which used the practical engineering problem of the transmission of information over a noisy channel, information theory information theory was later applied to other topics such as information retrieval, crytography, intelligence gathering, gambling, statistics, and even in musical composition.
Melvil Dewey
What began as an attempt to devise a system of classifying and cataloguing books by decimal numbers resulted in a life-long obsession to efficiently catalogue all of human knowledge. In essence, the DDC system provides ten broad topics, each divided into ten sub-topics, each of which is divided into another ten sub-topics, yielding a thousand topics that can be referred to by an integer number.
Ted Nelson
A sociologist by trade, Nelson was a pioneer of information technology, and coined the term "hypertext" in 1963. The first to use such concepts as hypermedia, transclusion, virtuality, intertwingularity and teledildonics, Nelson's legacy was that he had made computers easily accessible to ordinary people.
Paul Otlet
Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification, one of the most prominent examples of faceted classification which Ranganathan would later modify. He also pushed for the European adoption of the North American 3x5 inch index card used in most library catalogs around the world. Otlet wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize the world's knowledge, culminating in two books in which he dubbed his own field of 'documentation.'
Eugene Garfield
Garfield undertook the development of a comprehensive citation index which is now known as bibliometrics. His creation of the Science Citation Index (SCI) made it possible to calculate impact factors, which measure the importance of scientific journals which was significant as it raised the value of journals in the field of research.
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