The waxing and waning of a field: Reflections on information studies education

Abstract

In this short paper, avowedly personal, partial and pointillist in nature, I (i) sketch the early days of (mainly Anglo-American) information studies and the field's gradual institutionalization, (ii) describe its maturation, as both an academic discipline and a domain of professional practice, and (iii) speculate on its future in the light of oft-expressed predictions of its imminent demise as an autonomous enterprise within the academy. I invoke import-export data to demonstrate the newfound outer-directedness of the field and the growing attractiveness of its research to cognate disciplines. However, I also argue that the permeability of contemporary information studies' boundaries may in fact be the cause of its eventual undoing: in short, epistemic promiscuity comes at a price.