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D. Murali

What's in a name, Shakespeare might have said. Doesn't a rose smell sweet whatever it is called? But defining information professionals is tricky.

A BEAN-COUNTER is an accountant, apiarian is just the other name of beekeeper, bard is a poet, capitalist is how bigger investors can be called, and an out-crier is an archaic description of auctioneer.

But Michael Middleton of QUT School of Information Systems is not interested in these vocations; what engages him rather is "The way that information professionals describe their own discipline," as the title of his recent research paper indicates.

First, he looks at how the `discipline' has been formed. To help you remember, he cites Chaucer's 1386 definition of `disciplyne' as a `crafty science', and explains it as "a branch of instruction or education, or a department of learning or knowledge."

Though everyone manages information, those who manage it for a living are the information professionals, the ones "who recognise a requirement for intermediation between information processing systems and their users," reasons Middleton.

Such `intermediation' can take different forms, ranging from `direct intercession through personal assistance' to facilitating use through `interface design, classification, indexing and application of meta-information'.

While there is a continual debate on "what comprises the defining knowledge of the field of information science," there is `information management' as a more recent discipline.

However, since this is perceived to be `interdisciplinary', there are "charges of superficiality, lack of rigour and abandonment of carefully developed methodologies that have assured disciplinary integrity and success," states Middleton.

He cites a 1988 paper titled, The system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor, by Abbott who had categorised information professions as `qualitative' (principally librarians and journalists), and quantitative (a "complex and contentious group" including accountants, statisticians, operations researchers, and the like).

"He envisaged these groups coalescing under one jurisdiction as a consequence of the joint stimulants of computing technology and information science."

Middeton's paper also cites a 1993 article of Cronin, Stiffler, and Day, "The emergent market for information professionals: educational opportunities and implications".

On the `diffuseness' of the employment sector in this field, the trio had spoken of `heartland' (traditional jobs in established institutions), `hinterland' (information work utilising traditional skills, but outside the traditional institutions, or requiring adaptation), and `horizon' (software engineers, telecommunications managers, and so on).

Middleton draws attention to other terms too, such as `multimodal' that describes the tasks carried out, and `hybrid' to refer to "a person who has had education in both information management and a subject discipline such as biology or psychology, and who is an information specialist focusing in the subject discipline."

The bulk of Middleton's paper is about how thesauri describe information professionals and their professions.

Thus, the LISA Thesaurus of the Library and Information Science Abstracts classifies information professionals as a subgroup of "library and information professionals", and indexers are "unlinked to any information occupations."

Also, there are no `information managers' or `records managers' in LISA's world; `information work', `information management', and `knowledge management' have hierarchies of their own, unlinked to `information science' and `information management'.

Another thesaurus reference in the paper is of The Wilson database Library Literature and Information Science where there are almost a hundred narrow terms under `personnel', with many "representing specified types of information personnel" such as `archivists' and `indexers'. Middleton infers: "Given that `information scientists' is preferred to `information managers', it is to be expected that `information science' will be there and `information management' absent."

The author also studies Thesaurus of ERIC descriptors of the Educational Resources Information Centre that prefers `information scientists' to `information professionals' as an entry term; and the Australian Thesaurus of Educational Descriptors that recognises indexes and the process of indexing, "but not the people who do it."

In the Thesaurus of the American Society for Information Science & Technology `information managers' don't exist and `information resources management' is preferred to `information management', while "there is no room as yet for `knowledge management' or the people who do it, though knowledge workers are accommodated as information workers".

Inspec Thesaurus of the Institution of Electrical Engineers "does not mention information professionals, indexers, or librarians". Occupations Thesaurus of the National Library of Australia has a `business professionals' hierarchy though `information professionals' won't show beneath that.

The OECD Macrothesaurus recognises `information workers' "but only two specific types", viz. documentalists and librarians.

If that is disappointing, what can be more so is that the Thesaurus of Sociological Indexing Terms has place for professional workers, administrators, journalists, and teachers, but as Middleton informs, there is no room for "information or knowledge workers either as a group, or by specific types".

What does the author infer from his study? That the terminology of this "emerging social science discipline" is "inadequately defined", with "imprecise and diversified choice of descriptors in different vocabularies."

Even where terminology is "formally assigned by its own practitioners", Middleton finds that there is as yet "some way to go to reach a shared disciplinary paradigm."

Is IT too young a discipline to merit a good name?

ITworks@TheHindu.co.in

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