INFORMATIK – INFORMATION SCIENCE – INFORMATIONSWISSENSCHAFT

Description

Informatics, Information Science, Informationswissenschaft : under these keywords the state of the discussion of the new sciences, in the socialistic countries, the USA and England, and in the Federal Republic of Germany is reported. After each paragraph follows a short "resumé" which states the key points of the discussion. Some critical remarks are made.I. Introductionas the subject of a science hasgiven rise to various opinions in recent years. In my opinion this is not a matter of an endless dispute over terms, but of diverging schools of thought which arise on the one hand from habits of thought, traditions, cultural characteristics, etc., and on the other hand from different social systems, stages of development, general political goals, etc.
(1). The aim of this report is to analyse the state of the discussion in the period 1970-1973, on the basis of a selection of literature that should by no means be considered complete. Has the phenomenon of "information" become the subject of a new science? In the Eastern bloc, in the Anglo-Saxon language area and in the Federal Republic of Germany, this question is discussed under the following keywords: computer science, information science, information science. This selection of literature attempts to present this dispute objectively. A few critical remarks are then made.II. Literature report. Computer science The joint work by Mikhailov, Cernyiand Giljarevskij "Fundamentals of scientific documentation and information"
(2) calls the new science that deals with the phenomenon of "information" "informatics"
(3). It analyses the structure and properties of "scientific information"
(4). In the editorial foreword (pp. vii-xiv)Koblitzthat the term "informatics" refers to all types of "semantic information". The specialized information is only one part of it and represents a special field of computer science that can be called "information science." "Information and documentation science, on the other hand, is a science on the same hierarchical level as library science. That the term "Informatics" does not mean computer science is explained in the foreword by Adam.