Editing Information science (section)

===European documentation===

The discipline of ''[[documentation science]]'', which marks the earliest theoretical foundations of modern information science, emerged in the late part of the 19th century in Europe together with several more scientific indexes whose purpose was to organize scholarly literature. Many information science historians cite [[Paul Otlet]] and [[Henri La Fontaine]] as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895.<ref>Rayward, W. B. (1994). International federation for information and documentation. In W. A. Wiegand, & D. G. David Jr. (Eds.), The encyclopedia of library history (pp. 290–294). New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.</ref> A second generation of European Documentalists emerged after the [[Second World War]], most notably [[Suzanne Briet]].<ref>Maack, Mary Niles.(2004). The Lady and the Antelope: Suzanne Briet’s Contribution to the French Documentation Movement.” ''Library Trends'' 52, no. 4 (2004): 719–47.</ref> However, "information science" as a term is not popularly used in academia until sometime in the latter part of the 20th century.<ref name="Day 2001, p7">Day, Ronald. ''Modern Invention of Information''. Carbondale, Il.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001: 7</ref>

Documentalists emphasized the utilitarian integration of technology and technique toward specific social goals. According to Ronald Day, "As an organized system of techniques and technologies, documentation was understood as a player in the historical development of global organization in modernity – indeed, a major player inasmuch as that organization was dependent on the organization and transmission of information."{{r|Day 2001, p7}} Otlet and Lafontaine (who won the [[Nobel Prize]] in 1913) not only envisioned later technical innovations but also projected a global vision for information and [[information technologies]] that speaks directly to postwar visions of a global "information society". Otlet and Lafontaine established numerous organizations dedicated to standardization, bibliography, international associations, and consequently, international cooperation. These organizations were fundamental for ensuring international production in commerce, information, communication and modern economic development, and they later found their global form in such institutions as the [[League of Nations]] and the [[United Nations]]. Otlet designed the [[Universal Decimal Classification]], based on [[Melville Dewey]]'s decimal classification system.{{r|Day 2001, p7}}

Although he lived decades before computers and networks emerged, what he discussed prefigured what ultimately became the [[World Wide Web]]. His vision of a great network of [[knowledge]] focused on [[document]]s and included the notions of [[hyperlink]]s, [[Search engine (computing)|search engines]], remote access, and [[social network]]s.

Otlet not only imagined that all the world's knowledge should be interlinked and made available remotely to anyone, but he also proceeded to build a structured document collection. This collection involved standardized paper sheets and cards filed in custom-designed cabinets according to a hierarchical index (which culled information worldwide from diverse sources) and a commercial information retrieval service (which answered written requests by copying relevant information from index cards). Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search.<ref name="Day 2001, p7" />
By 1937 documentation had formally been institutionalized, as evidenced by the founding of the American Documentation Institute (ADI), later called the [[American Society for Information Science and Technology]].