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Information history: its importance, relevance and future

Toni Weller,
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Information
Information history: history
its importance, relevance
and future
437
Toni Weller
Department of Information Science, City University London, London, UK Received 28 September 2006
Accepted 10 June 2007

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergent field of information history (IH) and
to move towards a definition of IH. Some of the more traditional historical approaches to information
science are challenged in their claims to be information history.
Design/methodology/approach – The historiography of the field is discussed, and an analysis of
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the continuing development of IH is explored.

Findings – IH is a field that has been attracting increasing attention in recent years from historians
and information scientists alike. Although still a relatively young area, this paper argues that IH has
the potential to develop into a highly relevant and dynamic field of research. The paper concludes with
a look at the future for this area of research, with some suggestions as to how IH needs to develop in
order to gain the credence and recognition it deserves.
Originality/value – This paper attempts to augment the debate on IH and to encourage a broader
recognition of this young and dynamic field within LIS.
Keywords History, Information science, Library studies, Curricula
Paper type Conceptual paper

Defining information history

Information history is a distinct form of historical study in its own right, which looks at
the role of information within past societies. It is grounded in historical evidence and it
operates within the structures of historical research. It is history. But it also adopts
ideologies from information science. The fundamental questions of the LIS discipline
have always been related to information in society, politics, economics, the media, and
business, how people understand information, and how it is transformed by changes in
society. When these conceptual questions are allied to a rigorous historical
methodology, something quite distinct and powerful emerges. This is information
history: the historical study of information for its own sake.
Information science as a discipline has existed for perhaps 50 or 60 years.
Information has existed for centuries, millennia. As long as there have been records of
human existence, there has been some form of information. Information history is thus
the study of the relationship between humanity and its different forms of knowledge –
of recording, manifesting, disseminating, preserving, collecting, using, and
understanding information. Of how these issues affected, and were affected by,
social, economic and political developments. It is not just concerned with information Aslib Proceedings: New Information
technologies, but with all aspects of an information society – in the most catholic sense Perspectives
Vol. 59 No. 4/5, 2007
of the term. pp. 437-448
This is a slightly different emphasis than that taken by Alistair Black, the strongest q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0001-253X
advocate of information history to date. While Black has rightly always stressed the DOI 10.1108/00012530710817627
 AP importance of context and rigorous historical research, for him, information history
59,4/5 strongly encompasses the history of the library. Black has comprehensively examined
the range and scope of library history, showing that there have been academic and
professional bodies and publications dedicated to it since the 1960s (Black, 1997). He has
examined the cultural and socio-political role of the library (Black, 2001), including a
fascinating insight into the use of the library as a means of controlling and eradicating
438 social “diseases” such as deviancy, disorder, and poor discipline (Black, 2005).
Black has also discussed the history of information, but this has tended to be
manifested as information societies throughout history, or the history of information
management, focusing on the modern period post-1800 (Black, 1997, 2004; Black and
Brunt, 1999, 2000), rather than the history of information itself. More recently, Black
(2006) has suggested that information history could be used almost as an umbrella
term for the distinct and respected areas of book history, library history, the histories
of information management, information societies, infrastructures and systems.
This is certainly one way to make sense of an abstract research field. However, it
does not do justice to information history, which is more than simply the sum of its
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parts. Information history has the potential to be a field in its own right, despite its
difficulty to define. Its essence is not so much the definition of what information is or
was, but rather, the way in which information is or has been thought of and applied in
its own right. And, even more so, how information, in this particular sense, affected,
and is or was affected by, the social, political, economic and cultural climates of the
time.
Developments in the LIS field often tend to make connections between library and
information history – indeed, LIH is a recognised term. Library history is a significant
topic, but it is not synonymous with information history, nor does information history
have to focus on the library in any way to be valid in its own right. Library history has
a huge scope itself, covering libraries as institutions, as cultural objects, as centres for
the preservation of human knowledge, or as socio-political influences in society. Other
fascinating topics of library history include the histories of individual librarians or the
changing techniques for the control and access of information. But the material point is
that library history – in whatever manifestation you choose – is examining a physical
entity, a tangible body. Information history can be much more conceptual and abstract.
Information is intangible and multifaceted. This is why much discussion of
information history has broken it down into the more manageable histories of
technology, the book, the library, and so forth. However, by doing so, this underrates
the most fascinating area of this field.
Precisely because information is so intangible, and so enduring, its manifestation
for each generation tells us much about that society’s attitude towards control, culture,
politics, knowledge and education. Is the way we examine information in the
twenty-first century so unique? How does technology alter the way we interact with
information? How does socio-political information affect everyday perceptions of
reality? To what extent does access and control of information dominate social status?
How has the value of information changed? To help us understand our fascination with
information in the twenty-first century, we must examine the longer-term historical
trends and relationships between society and information.
This may sound very abstract and ambiguous, and indeed one of the reoccurring
criticisms of information history is that information is too vast a concept to define and
 examine. But, it is precisely this ambiguity which gives the field such potential depth. Information
One example of this is the post-modern historical approach which argues that there is a history
history for everyone and everything should we choose to find it. This approach also
favours the “everyday” person and experience, rather than the “great men” of history
that was so favoured during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth
century.
By adopting post-modernism in this way, it can be argued that information history 439
research is exploring the everyday experience and attitudes of people. There have been
historical explorations of such abstract notions of laughter and fear, such as Gatrell’s
(2006) history of English humour and laughter and Burke’s (2005) Cultural History of
Fear. These histories have examined fear and laughter in their own right, the
relationships they have with individuals and society and the reciprocal affect
socio-political context has upon them. Exactly the same argument as is being proposed
here for information history. These abstract and ambiguous themes of fear and
laughter are considered valid history so why not information as well?
Because information can be understood in multiple ways, it presents a diverse field
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of enquiry:
.
the economic history of information (the cost of collecting, disseminating,
controlling, and knowing the right information at the right time);
.
the political history of information (propaganda, surveillance, rise of the state,
power);
.
the social history of information (censorship, education, auto didacticism, social
status); and
.
the cultural history of information (literature, art, societies, museums).

Or, is the history of information different in a democratic country than in a state with
communist traditions, or a developing nation?
Broader ideologies can also be applied; perhaps a Marxist history of information
which understands it purely in terms of an economic product and process, or a feminist
history of information examining the differences in what types of information women
have been encouraged or discouraged from pursuing historically – are innate gender
issues involved? (Incidentally, there has been some fascinating work by Moody (2006)
on the notion of gender behaviour in cyberspace and how the internet remains a
predominantly male construction.) By looking at society’s understanding and
application of information in its past manifestations, we are able to meditate on the
present, and the future. Interest in information is not a recent or transient phenomenon.
Our contemporary interest in information should be understood in its historical context
in order for us to appreciate the depth and longevity of the fundamental issues with
which we are dealing today.
Black (1998, p. 40) has argued that:
In terms of period, the focus of information history would surely be that of the age of
modernity.
Although traditionally the modern period is understood by historians to begin from the
late eighteenth century, Black suggests that in terms of information “the age of
modernity” could stretch from the early modern period of the fourteenth to the
 AP sixteenth century. Most work in this field to date has indeed focused on the period since
59,4/5 1750 (Black, 1998; Agar, 2003; Headrick, 2000; Weller and Bawden, 2005, 2006),
although there have been some attempts at presenting more of a grand narrative such
as Edward Higgs’s (2004) ambitious study of the development of the information state
for five centuries from 1500 to the present day. However, as Weller has argued, there is
no reason why it should be limited to modernity (Weller, 2005, pp. 273, 276-7).
440 Information history is not limited to modernity since information has always been part
of human society, right back to ancient times; indeed, a society cannot exist without
information. To understand and study it in multiple contemporary and contextual
terms gives us a hugely rich and intriguing field of research.
This is not to suggest that all information historians study all periods; quite clearly
this would be both unworkable and unrealistic. There are, of course, obvious practical
limitations of evidence and sources the further back you go, but historians understand
the sources and documents of their periods. They understand where documents can be
found, the limitations of evidence and the weight of certain evidence over others. Just
as there are specialist political, cultural or economic historians of differing eras who
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understand the contextual subtleties of their period, why not ultimately also specialist
medieval, renaissance, or modern information historians?
If information history is defined through the study of the origins of the information
society, or the tools and processes for collecting information, then perhaps modernity
would be a more appropriate period. However, if it is defined, as suggested here, as the
study of information in its own right, of its relationship with, and impact upon, society,
then this restriction surely no longer applies. Information transcends period.

Historiography
Information scientists are not the only ones interested in information history. There
has been a great deal of movement in this direction by historical scholars in recent
years. Quite aside from scholarly research and monographs in this area, the Institute of
Historical Research in London now runs regular seminars on knowledge in society, and
the annual international conference, started in 2002, on The Future Direction of the
Humanities, continually has a theme on “The stuff of knowledge in a ‘knowledge
society’ or ‘knowledge economy’”.
For a subject that has only seriously been considered by scholars for the last decade
or so, it already has a striking bibliography. Early forms of information history used
variations of the terms “historical information science”, or “historical informatics”
which focused on the history of the discipline or a particular technology, or even the
application of digital technologies to the study of history (Marvin, 1987; Karvalics,
1994, 2002; Warner, 2000; Boonstra et al., 2004). These were not good history though,
since they studied LIS themes without a historical methodology.
As contemporary interest in the information society and information technologies
grew, historians who traditionally focused on the history of science and technology
began to apply these ideas to the notion of the “information state”. Higgs (2004),
recently published a book on the Information State in England Since 1500, arguing
that the state has long collected data on its citizens in some form; it is only the
technological processes that have changed over time. Agar (2003) has also looked at the
process of government data collecting since the nineteenth century, suggesting that the
development of the civil service and of the computer are strongly linked. The
 mechanics of government data collection and processing in the late eighteenth and Information
early nineteenth centuries was examined by David Eastwood (Eastwood, 1989) as early history
as 1989. James Beniger’s key work is on the origins of the information society brought
about by the technological and economic crisis of control during American
industrialisation in the nineteenth century (Beniger, 1986). In the last few months Oz
Frankel has published a book on the processes of state enquiry in the nineteenth
century, in which he argues that through the new government enquiries and 441
committees of this period, which were then published and circulated to the public,
citizens assumed the standing of informants and readers (Frankel, 2006).
Another trend has been to trace the histories of technologies used to disseminate or
produce information, such as Elizabeth Eisenstein’s analysis of the printing press as an
agent of change (Eisenstein, 1979), or Brian Winston’s account of the telegraph and
telephone (Winston, 1998). Daniel Headrick has written about the pre-mechanised
knowledge technologies from 1700 to 1850 (Headrick, 2000), including the rise of
cartography, statistics, graphs and dictionaries – technologies that served to organise,
display, store, or communicate knowledge. There have also been some attempts at
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social histories of information, such as Burke’s (2000) social history of knowledge, or

Briggs’s (1977) social history of the telephone, although these are still limited by a view
of information technology. For Briggs, it is obviously the telephone; for Burke, the
printing press and distribution.
In the last few years there has been more explicit discussion of information history as
an area of research in its own right, stressing the importance of rigorous historical
methodology. Although Alistair Black often associates information history with library
history, he has done a huge amount for the recognition of this field. His research has
ranged from work on surveillance, bureaucracy and public librarianship in nineteenth
century Britain (Black, 2001), to the role of information management in MI5 (Black and
Brunt, 2000). He has been consistent and unrelenting in his calls on the importance of
historical context and appreciation of information history as a subject (Black, 1995, 1998,
2001, 2006). More recently, Weller (2005) has written on the emergence of information
history, the crisis of control which helped lead to the nineteenth century origins of the
information society (Weller and Bawden, 2005), and Victorian information history, by
focusing on individual understandings and perceptions of information rather than on
technological developments or institutions (Weller and Bawden, 2006). Such contextual
examinations of information provide both a depth and richness to the field and help to
show its validity as an area of research in its own right.

Information science “histories”

There have been arguments that information science needs to embrace more broadly
accepted theories from other disciplines and consider the wider theoretical and
philosophical basis of its own field in order to progress (Karvalics, 1994; Warner, 2000;
Hjørland, 2005). Information history certainly serves this purpose, and it is also
recognised by historians as an emerging new area. In Agar’s (2003, p. 13) recent work
he supports this view, arguing that:
Information – what it meant and how it was collected and used – must be understood in
terms of its context [. . .] an informational history is emerging. Historians of an older
generation [. . .] are re-emphasizing informational aspects to their own work to reinterpret
business and cultural history [. . .] There is potential in a new informational history.
 AP Information science needs to pay more attention to this exciting and emergent field,
59,4/5 whose fundamental research questions are so related to the LIS discipline. There is no
reason why such research should be limited within the disciplines of either history or
information science; indeed it would benefit most from more interaction and
conversation between scholars in both areas. This is another reason why a rigorous
historical methodology is so important to information history; it helps information
442 scientists in this field to be taken seriously by historians, who in turn, could benefit
from an information science understanding of the philosophies of information and
knowledge.
One serious criticism of many “historical” information science works is that they
apply or impose twenty-first century terms and ideas onto a historical background,
using them in an ahistorical and anachronistic way. A recent example, by Spink and
Currier (2006), attempted to look at historical examples of human information
behaviour. In itself this is an interesting idea, but it applied a methodology based upon
simply searching through the biographies of individuals (often using only a single
volume as evidence) looking for explicit reference of the word “information”. For
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example, in their discussion of Charles Darwin’s information behaviour, only one

source was studied – his autobiography – and from this, only three brief quotes are
used to support their findings. These are simply cited, with no reference to their
contextual placement or wider meaning, no other supporting evidence, no analysis of
the source or the quotes, and no attempt to reference the alleged information behaviour
within the bigger picture of Darwin’s world view. The result was that much useful
material was probably ignored, and the references that were picked out were simplistic
and abstract.
This is not information history. Information history research must be firmly
contextualized with an appreciation of the wider events that may have influenced the
individual or event:
[Research] must be rigorous in its methodology, that is, internally coherent and consistent. It
must also ensure that the evidence used have been checked back to their original sources and
that any bias or ideological stance of the author (or indeed, the historian) has been
acknowledged [. . .] Any argument must be self-referencing, it must show where it fits into the
existing literature [. . .] Evidence must not be wilfully ignored, but explored and challenged
and, if necessary, revisions must be made [. . .] in order to accommodate it (Weller, 2006).
This is a view strongly supported by Black (1995, 1998, 2006). Too often historical
information science research neglects this rigorous methodology and the result tends to
be misleading and reductionist.
Information scientists writing “historically” have also repeatedly attempted to fit
modern concepts such as information and document management, the internet, and so
forth into the developments and technologies of earlier centuries. Bawden and
Robinson’s (2000) discussion of the similarities of the communications revolutions of
the fifteenth century and the twentieth century (with the introduction of the printing
press and the internet, respectively) is one such example, although the authors do
acknowledge the limitations of the study. Karvalics (2002) examines the history of the
internet, and in doing so constantly jumps from the sixteenth century to the
twenty-first century in a way which not only suggests an inevitable teleological
progression, but which also completely omits any reference to the context in which
these technologies were developed, or why and how they were used within society.
 Examples such as these focus on the development of specific communication Information
technologies and ways of organising information – the telegraph and telephone in history
particular, and later the radio, typewriter, classification schemes – without considering
the differing contexts in which each of these technologies emerged, or their
contemporary impacts.
These accounts also have a tendency to be deterministic, and often at least
indirectly support the idea of a teleological progression into the “ultimate” form of 443
information society. It could be argued from an information science viewpoint that
these are all ways of writing about the past in terms of current concepts, but they are
not good or valid history and thus they cannot be considered information history.

Information history as a field of research

Alistair Black has warned of the limitations of information history; that the very
ubiquity of information in modern society makes the potential for the topic so vast that
it becomes impossible to define. The very intangibility of information raises questions
about its nature and properties, presenting problems for any potential information
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historian. He asks:
If information itself defies precise definition, what chance is there that its definition might be
historicized? (Black, 2006, p. 2).
While this is a valid and important methodological issue, it seems to miss the point that
just as there is not (and most likely cannot be) a single definition of information in the
twenty-first century, nor was there likely to have been one in any other period of
history. Therefore to try to impose a modern interpretation on the past is, in its very
essence, unhistorical.
This does not mean that research must be abstract. It simply means that we must be
aware that the notions of information, knowledge, the information society and other
information science ideas are often modern phraseology, and their application to the
past can risk being anachronistic. One way of avoiding this is, again, to ensure
research is firmly contextualized. A recent study of Victorian perceptions of
information, for example, was grounded in the semantics and definitions of
information through nineteenth century dictionaries (Weller, 2006). Information
science debates over the meanings and distinction between knowledge and information
and so forth must be applied carefully in historical study; we need to define the past in
its own terms and not apply modern terminology or values where none existed.
In fact, this approach could be regarded as the philosophical basis for the field of
information history. The very fact that information can “relate to anything [. . .] the
smell of a new perfume [. . .]; in Landseer’s ‘Stag at Bay’; in a letter to a sweetheart; a
laboratory slide; a computer tape” (Ritchie, 1982) allows a huge diversity of
understanding of its properties and nature. Contemporary modern society does not
limit its discussion of information to one definition; it is understood and researched as a
commodity, a process, education, through the media, propaganda, and policy, and
through the techniques used to collect, organise, disseminate and preserve it, to name
just a few.
Information science debates over the properties of information, of the potential
transitions from facts or data through to information and then knowledge and wisdom
come into play here. From Plato’s three analyses of knowledge to Popper’s three
 AP worlds, information has long been a topic of philosophical enquiry. To align such
59,4/5 questions with information history provides further depth. It is not necessary or
desired that there should be one single definition of information – such a definition is
so subjective to the context in which it is created that it serves little historical purpose
– each era will define it in a new way according to its own values and world view.
These changing definitions in themselves allow insight to the understanding and
444 importance of information proving a philosophy of information. Empirical enquiry
alongside philosophical and conceptual debate provides a strong framework for an
information history rich in research and theory.
This is where information scientists are better equipped than historians to tackle the
philosophical issues of information history. They better understand the debates and
theories surrounding the nature of information and knowledge. Allied with a historical
methodology, information historians are in a strong position to recognise information
as it was expressed and understood by past societies. This is what is so interesting
about information history and gives the field scope.
As a field of interest that is independently being recognised by historians,
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information science scholars need to become more aware that this is a lucrative and
dynamic area. There are significant funded research projects in this field currently
underway, ranging from “The early information society in Britain: the emergence of
information management and information science, 1900-1975” at Leeds Metropolitan
University, an AHRC funded project worth £78,000, to the smaller project at the
University of Reading, also funded by the AHRC, the £38,000 “Designing information
in everyday life, 1815-1914”. There is also a project currently under way for a potential
European LIS curriculum that includes an information history panel (Makinen et al.,
2005).
Information history allows for a deeper understanding of the role information and
its uses (and misuses) has played in the past, thereby enriching both of its parent
disciplines. History is, after all, a dynamic, changing story. One of its key purposes is to
provide understanding of change, and information science as a discipline is often
regarded as being a manifestation of a rapidly changing society (Warner, 2000;
Saracevic, 1999). Such a combination should also allow for a deeper discussion of the
issues central in our own culture (the information society, the digital divide,
information literacy, privacy rights, etc.) enabling us to place them in their wider
historical context and flesh out a more three dimensional picture of the thematic roots
of our contemporary society.
Likewise, contemporary society also has had an influence on the growth of
information history. As Weller (2006) has argued:
One of history’s greatest strengths is that we can extract patterns and themes from the past to
try to explain contemporary human behaviour or cultural climate, or in order to learn from
the mistakes (or successes) of the past. In doing so, we add to the bigger story of human
development. The emergence of information history and digital history in the last decade, for
example, has to a great extent been down to a reinterpretation of history, based upon the
contemporary values and concerns of the information society.
Weller continues that the dominant themes of the information age have led to a
reconsideration of our history. The research by Agar (2003) and also Higgs (2004) on
the histories of the government machine and the information state, are essentially
revisions of the role central government plays (or should not play) in the collection of
 data on its citizens in the light of contemporary concerns over ID cards, data protection, Information
and surveillance issues. Revisions have also been made to the role and history
conceptualisation of information and knowledge in society, as these themes have
become more prominent in everyday culture (Black, 1998, 1995; Weller and Bawden,
2006; Burke, 2000).

The future of information history 445

So, where next for information history research? Despite all the existing research, there
is one fundamental area that has been largely overlooked, and that is the social and
cultural history of information. The technological and infrastructural developments in
the processing and collection of information are significant, and it is important we
understand them, but it is also crucial to realise that they did not occur in a vacuum.
Throughout human history, perceptions of information in everyday life and culture
have changed alongside the developments in information infrastructures in business,
government and communication.
This is an area of information history which has yet to be fully explored, and is a
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central thesis of the doctoral research on which this paper is based (Weller,
forthcoming). What better way to explore the historic perceptions of information and
knowledge than through the everyday cultural artefacts by which it was understood?
Current research under way by Toni Weller uses an information history methodology
to examine how information was disseminated and displayed in nineteenth century
etiquette books and periodicals; how access to certain information through certain
cultural channels could affect social behaviour and social status. Cultural
understandings and manifestations of information are just as important as the
political and technological, or the cultural institutions of information such as museums
and libraries.
There also needs to be much more information history taught at a degree level,
particularly within LIS. The benefits are numerous for both the student and the future
of the discipline. Teaching historical methodology encourages rigorous and critical
thinking, which can be applied to any form of research or professional work, historical
or not. Addressing some of the key historical and philosophical questions and issues of
information science also provides a real backbone for the discipline. It gives roots and
credence to something that can also be very contemporary and modern. It encourages
broader thinking; to understand that technology is not the only aspect of LIS, and to
recognise how our own society developed.
Calls for more inclusion in the LIS curriculum have also been made by Black (2006,
p. 445) who similarly argues that:
Dissemination and promotion of the subject to this community is arguably a prerequisite not
only of the development of information history but also of its acceptance as a legitimate field
in the history discipline.
Bringing a more academic focus to university courses provides depth to the discipline,
without losing its professional and commercial interests. We need to give future
students and up-and-coming academics more awareness of just how varied and
exciting information science can be. Information history is a specialism just as much as
GIS, legal research, web-log analysis, librarianship, or information retrieval. It requires
an understanding of historical methodology and research, but it also requires an
 AP understanding of the nature of information and current debates in the LIS field in order
59,4/5 to make it relevant.
Information historians should therefore have an understanding of the methodology
of historical research, of challenging sources, providing context, and presenting
rigorous evidence. They should also be able to understand the conceptual debates over
the nature of information, and notions of the information society, so prevalent in the
446 information science community. A new generation of researchers with backgrounds in
both history and information science would strengthen the validity of the information
history field. In order to provide such an opportunity, more credence must be paid to
the study of information history within information science degree courses (and,
ultimately, history degrees as well).
There is undoubtedly a strong and emergent area of research here, both among
information scientists and historians, and it is one that is producing successfully
funded projects. It is also an important one for our own contemporary society since we
often overlook the increased role and influence information has in our everyday lives
and how it is changing the way we think and interact. The focus is all too often on
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technology and the immediacy of “here and now” Although it is allied to information
science and historical study, information history deserves to be recognised as an
independent field in its own right. Not to do so would be to miss one of the most
exciting and rewarding ways of studying this fundamental aspect of society.
Information history is gaining momentum as a research area; we should embrace and
encourage its development.

References
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Corresponding author
Toni Weller can be contacted at: t.d.weller@city.ac.uk

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