Abstract
Directions of future development of library and information science (LIS) and higher education of information professionals are of great concern to information practitioners and librarians under the drastic change in information environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the object of LIS study and to reconstruct the definition of LIS so as to get a clear view of a future development of the field. After examining a new stream of LIS in the United States, LIS was defined as a field on human actions, social institutions, and technologies which relate to ‘sharing knowledge through records in a society’, which is fundamental to all kinds of activities in the society. A ‘knowledge and information space’ model was proposed to frame the object of LIS study. The intellectual structure of the field was also shown. Thus LIS has possibility and potential ability to develop as a newly restructured field of ‘knowledge informatics’.
