Humanistic Foundations of Information Science in an Age of Data Intelligence

A tension exists in information science (IS) between the scientific approaches and aspirations of the field’s members, many of whom identify with disciplines such as computer science, and the field’s long humanistic traditions, most notably in librarianship and bibliography as they intersect with areas of study such as history and literature. Bush's “Memex vision,” as just one example, imagines IS as a “scientific” discipline. It is a vision, as the scholar of information history Paul Duguid (2021) has shown, “fostered increasing elision between descriptions of people and machines” (p. 248). This panel investigates elisions such as these and the tensions in IS between modes of scientific investigation and humanistic modes of knowing. Through presentations on bibliography and hermeneutics as they can be understood from diverse cultural and historical perspectives, this panel explores some of the humanistic foundations of information science in an age when intelligence is readily associated with data and science rather than culturally specific methods of human interpretation and understanding.