Information science has differentiated information technology from productive technology, but the common concept of technology remains largely unexplored. A view of technology as a human construction, applied to productive technology, has begun to be developed to comprehend information...

Information overload is by no means a new concept, but has come to prominence during the last decade. This paper reviews the nature and causes of overload, and considers possible solutions, both organisational and technical, and its relevance to the information professional.

As we have developed through the ages, tools have always been the key to adding value to both individuals and society. Information and knowledge are the high‐value tools of the present age. The rise of the Internet has led to a preoccupation with “free” information services. This article...

A synthesis of some of the themes and ideas developed in a recently published book about the future of information: i in the sky: visions of the information future. Common themes included: problems in defining information and defining future time‐scales, theubiquity of information,...

Information science has been convincingly characterised as a response to developments in information and communications technologies and as part of the gestalt of the computer. Despite this, it has had a limited understanding of information technology and has repressed or disguised its origins....

Ever since Information technology was introduced into the work of some special libraries in the 1960s, there have been predictions that the end‐user searching of online databases would make librarians unnecessary. The enormous developments in automated information retrieval since then, and the...

Excited by what has now become possible, paricipants in the creation of the new digital library often overlook fundamental (often implicit) aspects of the paper paradigm that still need to be maintained in the digital universe. In the realm of scholarly and sxientific communication, ths issues...