In Search of New Identity for LIS Discipline, with Some References to Iran

Abstract

The present paper offers that most of the advocates of discipline of library and information science believe that there is a lack of theoretical foundation and rational identity. The author maintains that there has been an error in defining the subject by confusing library with librarianship. That is many researchers have derived the concept of librarianship from library. Therefore they came to define librarianship as an entity only through the social application and services. If instead, a librarian was assumed to be a person who was usually a scholar, with or without the knowledge of classification properly, and if it was further assumed that before establishing any library, at least there has always been one thoughtful person with the enthusiasm of classifying his own tacit or explicit knowledge in order to retrieve, the concept of librarianship could have been derived from the concept of personal seeking of knowledge, or the need of any knowledgeable person who believes in scientific classification for the sake of retrieval. Thus, there has always been the necessity for scientific classification even if there has not been any formal library. So, I propose that librarianship is more related to the knowledge retrieval and classification which is in the mind of all people specially scholars and learned men before the library, as a place for the collection of books and other materials come to being.

Changing the Approach: Library and Information Science (LIS) Weaknesses Will Turn into Strength

“…The author believes that if we change our way of looking at LIS, many problems will vanish and many weaknesses will perish. I have discussed in my previous articles (Fadaie, 2008;2009) that changing the approach will bring a new and strong identity to LIS. I have showed that concept of LIS is not derived from the concept of library as a physical or digital place; rather it is the concept of LIS as information retrieval needs of humans that make people to create library or information center.…”