Information management
Although bound up with the tradition of the ‘special library’, information management differs from such earlier concepts in its focus on all kinds of information and a concern for the relationship between information provision and organizational performance. In many special libraries there had long been responsibility for managing internal documentation of various kinds, especially research reports. The history of this development is usefully explored by Black, Muddiman and Plant (2007) who note the emergence of information management concepts following the end of the First World War, with the formal organization of ‘information bureaux’ in the establishment of ASLIB (the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux) in the UK in 1924. Some techniques, however, were even older, witness Kaiser’s work on indexing (1908, 1911). Indeed, we can date many of the ideas of what is now called ‘information management’ (although ‘documentation’ is used as a near equivalent in much of Europe) to the founding by Otlet and La Fontaine of the International Institute of Bibliography in 1895 (Rayward, 1975).
The first use of the terms ‘information management’ or ‘information resource(s) management’ can be dated to the report of the US National Commission on Federal Paperwork (1977), which drew attention to the costs of handling ‘paperwork’ (which included electronic documents of all kinds) in Federal departments and in other organizations of all kinds in tendering for government research contracts. More recently, the ‘digital revolution’ and the newer Web-based technologies have transformed the handling of information in organizations and made the economic issues more apparent, to the extent that information management is now seen as having a necessary role in the management of organizations.
However, although the original use of the term clearly identified ‘information’ as the content of documents, ‘information management’ has also come to be used in other areas, usually to identify either the management of information technology (e.g., Synott and Gruber, 1981) or the management of information systems (e.g., Galliers and Leidner, 2004). To resolve this confusion of interests, a definition is needed and that provided for another encyclopedia will serve here:
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