Unknown

"Only in a very static profession can one be trained to slot in immediately to an available job, and our profession is far from static. It is more beneficial for the students to give them a generalised grounding in a wide variety of professional activities and concerns, so that they will have some background knowledge for no matter what job is first available. For those who seek it, our subject also has its cultural value, which can contribute to a general education."

"There does seem to be among some members of our profession a rather desperate search for a "fundamental theory of information", which leads them to attempt to derive our practice from disciplines such as epistemology, or hermeneutics, or discourse analysis, or semiotics, or even "cybersemiotics". Their derivations rarely make adequate contact with the realities of information practice … The theory of a science should spring from deep immersion in its practice."

"Looking back, I ask myself why so little of the basic research has had an impact on professional practice."

"Our profession is concerned with three "aspects of the world". First, how people behave when they feel a need for information; second, characteristics of documentary information that constrain how we can manipulate it; and third, characteristics of the physical media that carry the information, whether they be static books or dynamic electronic networks."

"Theoretical research in information science is still marked by a tendency to play safe... it is still marked by timidity. It could now afford to be more boldly speculative, intellectually exciting and therefore more attractive to intelligent and ambitious students." Have things changed?"

"Varied views were put forward as to the content and priorities of information science, though there was general agreement that its central topics should be information organisation, dissemination and retrieval."

"Bertie Brookes and I shared a common view that, beyond the practical activities of information provision, there could be discerned a more general science of information. He tended towards a mathematical formulation of this: I was more interested in its social aspects."

"The problems of subject search on the Internet are no different in principle: search engines may permit easy location of verbally expressed topics, but we still seek to improve our methods of navigation."

"After my first encounter with in the Patent Office, and subsequent use of the (UDC) for the Akers library, I became increasingly interested in problems of information organisation for retrieval. My first paper in the field was "The Structure of a Connective Index" (Vickery, 1950)."

""We do not encourage initiative," said the factory manager. "What you must do is to learn to work to the safety rules." It was my first day in my first job, as a plant chemist in an explosives factory, located in the English countryside, in July 1941. Happily, he was quite wrong. We were not making some old, tried and tested explosive like nitroglycerine or TNT. It was the first large -scale production of a brand-new chemical, code-named RDX-Research Department eXplosive-developed by a government military research department."

"The service professions such as medicine and teaching have proud and age-old traditions. Only relatively recently have we realised that serving people's information needs can be as socially valuable as looking after their health and educational needs."

"The principles of information science apply, whatever the medium of transfer."

"The old-established groups in the information profession... have come to recognise that many other social groups are concerned with information transfer."

"The development of information research has increased considerably the interaction of emerging information science with other disciplines. Librarianship has traditionally had links with education and classification and has drawn ideas from logic and philosophy. But during the last fifty years new insights and methods have been derived from sociology and social psychology, from computer science, from operations research and related quantitative approaches, from communications research, from linguistics, and most recently from the new hybrids: cognitive science and artificial intelligence."

"[There has been] a widening of the field covered by the concept of “information”, both its theory and its practice. Information transfer has been put on a par with the transfer of matter and energy, as one of the primary natural processes.’"

"Information systems, at any level of complexity above that of speech, necessarily involve technologies such as printing, telecommunications, or computers. However, to information science technical potentialities and constraints are of importance mainly in that they affect the social relations concerned."

"It is essential to stress that information science is not solely concerned with science information, nor indeed only with the provision of information to academic and professional workers, but with all forms of information transfer in society."

"The scientific study of the communication of information in society – “information science” in the sense of an academic discipline..."

"The term “information science” first appeared in the guise of “information scientist”. Particularly in industry during recent decades, some qualified scientists moved out of research, development of production into a new occupational role, that of providing an active information service to their colleagues. They regarded themselves as “information” scientists rather than “research” scientists. As this kind of work expanded and became formalized the need was seen to provide training for those who would enter the occupation. In time, the content of this training came to be called 'information science'."

"It is with this whole cycle [between generation and use of information] that information science is now concerned."

"Information science is identified as... the study of the communication of information in society. This meaning is only beginning to emerge from its practical background, the social activity of facilitating information transfer."

"In seeking scientific understanding of the processes of information transfer we have had to go considerably outside the subject limits within which 'information science' as an academic subject is normally constrained... It has become increasingly clear that only by widening its “knowledge base” can information science establish a solid foundation for future development."

"The representation of knowledge in symbolic form is a matter that has pre-occupied the world of documentation since its origin. The problem is now relevant in many situations other than documents and indexes. The structure of records and files in databases: data structures in computer programming; the syntactic and semantic structure of natural language; knowledge representation in artificial intelligence; models of human memory: in all these fields it is necessary to decide how knowledge may be represented so that the representations may be manipulated."

"In the past, documentation has frequently been compared with librarianship, with some argument as to which comprehends the other. The field is more helpfully characterised if we take its scope to be all forms of document (i.e. any physical carrier of symbolic messages) and all aspects of their handling, from production to delivery. The document system then becomes very much wider than conventional librarianship – it includes publication and printing, distribution, some forms of telecommunication, analysis, storage, retrieval and delivery to the user."

"Documentation is a practice concerned with all the processes involved in transferring documents from sources to users."

"The field of study [of information science] is so wide and varied; research is necessarily restricted to accessible areas; it often (and rightly) has the practical aim of providing guidance in a specific situation, rather than searching for generalisations; the isolation of variables for investigation is often so difficult; rarely can confirmatory experiments be undertaken."

"… it is most important – particularly in an immature field like information science - to accept that all modes of study and all analytical methods can make useful contributions, and not to denigrate [qualitative] models as “just description”"

"Once a drunkard always a drunkard."

"Ur pok Spagn zo bet roet dezhi ► She's got a Spanish kiss (She's pregnant.)"

"Neb en deus ur vaouez vrav / En deus div atav ► Whoever has a pretty wife gets always two (The wife puts on weight.)"

"Karantez ar merc'hed zo e-giz ar pell / Pa soñjer an nebeutañ ez a gant an avel ► A woman's love is like chaff: it goes with the wind when you don't pay attention"

"Honnezh zo dir war he dremm ► There is steel on her face (She's shameless.)"

"Honnezh ne ziwano ket ar faou en he genoù ► No beech tree will grow in her mouth (She's a chatterbox.)"

"Honnezh he deus un teod da dennañ an diaoul eus an ifern ► She could remove the devil from Hell with her tongue"

"Honnezh he deus bragez ha lostenn ganti ► She has trousers and a skirt (She acts like a master.)"

"Gwell eo un dorzh vara war an daol evit ur melezour war ar prenestr ► Better a loaf of bread on the table than a mirror on the window"

"Gouzañv an amzer hag ar merc'hed / Daou dra ret da ober ► Two things one must do: suffer the weather and women"

"Gant ar c'hoant da bignat re uhel / Ar plac'hig a ziskenn izel ► When she wants to climb high, the young girl falls low"

"Al loc'hañ eo an diaesañ ► The beginning is the hardest"

"An diviner a c'hounez e voued, al labourer na ra ket ► The soothsayer earns his food, the worker does not"

"Dibaot ar c'halvez / A labour hep danvez ► The carpenter seldom works without material"

"Da louarn kousket / Ne zeu tamm boued ► No food comes to the sleeping fox"

"Ar pezh a zo graet gant ma zad / A zo graet mat ► What is done by my father is well done"

"Ar gwellañ bara da zebriñ / A vez gounezet o c'hweziñ ► The best bread to eat is earned with sweat"

"Ar c'housk a c'heller digoll / Met kousket a-raok zo koll ► One can catch up on sleep but sleeping in advance is vain"

"Ar c'haerañ charretour a ziskar e garr ► Even the best carter tips his cart"

"Ar boued d'an eur, al labour pa c'heller ► Food on time, work when possible"

"An tu eo an hanter eus al labour ► The method is half the work"

"An hini na sec'h ket e bal / 'Zle bep mare sec'hañ e dal ► Whoever doesn't dry his shovel must dry his brow"

"An hini a zo akuit da zebriñ a zo akuit da labourat ► Whoever is good at eating is good at working"