DOCUMENTATION, INFORMATION SCIENCE, （文档、信息科学）.pdf

Preprint of article published in Information Processing and Management 32, no. 1 (1996): 63-76; and reprinted in Hahn, T. B. M. Buckland, eds. Historical Studies in Information Science . Medford, NJ: Information Today, 1998, pp. 159-172. This preprint may differ from the published version. DOCUMENTATION, INFORMATION SCIENCE, AND LIBRARY SCIENCE IN THE USA MICHAEL BUCKLAND School of Library and Information Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4600 Abstract — Three related questions are addressed: Why was the work of the European documentalists largely ignored in the USA before the Second World War? What was the information science versus library science argument about? Technological innovation was a vital force in library science in the late 19th century and again after 1950. Why was it not a vital force inbetween? Examination of the technological background and of the Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, suggests that there was a temporary paradigm change away from design and technological innovation. Arguments over information science reflected a reversal of that paradigm. INTRODUCTION Any satisfactory account of the cultural and intellectual history of library science in the U.S.A. during the twentieth century will, among other requirements, need to account for three puzzling and, probably, related features: 1. Technical and technological experimentation and innovation, notably by the European documentalists, appear to have been substantially ignored in library science until after the Second World War; 2. There was an intense but generally unsatisfactory controversy known as information science versus library science after the Secon