Whether the Evolution of iSchool Revolves Around “Information, Technology and People”?

Abstract

As the research topics and specialties of the Information Schools (iSchool) have always been evolving, the new trends in research are emerging constantly. Whether the evolution of iSchool is still pursuing its vision and focusing on specific tracks of the information, technology and people deserves to be investigated. In this paper, the literatures published on 86 Information Science and Library Science journals, included in the Social Sciences Citation Index database of Web of Science between 2006 and 2015 are selected as the dataset. A co-word analysis is conducted to study the research topics of iSchool first. Then, combined with temporal and longitudinal information from literatures, under the help of Citespace, we identify the evolution of each topic. Based on the knowledge evolution, we reveal that the information is the primary line of all topics in the studied period. Technology helps create innovative information systems and designs information solutions to promote the evolution of iSchool, and the evolution of iSchool aims to maximize the potential of humans. In such a comprehensive way of exploring iSchool, a clear identity about iSchool vision is not only can be made, an effective research framework and a reliable reference for real-time tracking research is also provided.