This is a preprint of an article published in the Journal of the American Society of Information Science 42:5 (June 1991): 351-360, published for the American Society for Information Science by Wiley and available online to ASIS members and other registered users at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/. This text may vary slightly from the published version. Similar discussion occurs in the authors Information and Information Systems (Greenwood Press, 1991; Paperback: Praeger).

*New* Информация как вещь. Russian translation by Studybounty free essays database, September 2023.
*New* Інформацїя Як Рїч, Ukrainian translation by StudyCrumb essay writers, September 2023.

INFORMATION AS THING

by Michael Buckland,
School of Information Management and Systems,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4600

Abstract

Three meanings of "information" are distinguished: "Information-as-process"; "information-as-knowledge"; and "information-as-thing", the attributive use of "information" to denote things regarded as informative. The nature and characteristics of "information-as-thing" are discussed, using an indirect approach ("What things are informative?"). Varieties of "information-as-thing" include data, text, documents, objects, and events. On this view "information" includes but extends beyond communication. Whatever information storage and retrieval systems store and retrieve is necessarily "information-as-thing". These three meanings of "information", along with "information processing", offer a basis for classifying disparate information-related activities (e.g. rhetoric, bibliographic retrieval, statistical analysis) and, thereby, suggest a topography for "information science".

The text of this article is available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4x2561mb.


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