The historical and epistemological relations between Librarianship and Information Science in the Brazilian scientific production

Abstract

Abstract This is an exploratory qualitative and bibliographic research without a chronological framework that addresses the historical and epistemological relations of Library Science and Information Science from the Brazilian scientific production in Information Science. This study addresses how and which aspects in the historical and epistemological relation occur between Information Science and Librarianship in Brazilian scientific production. The general objective is to identify to what extent the content of publications brings the two fields together. Specifically, the objectives were as follows: list works within the Brazilian scientific production in Information Science that deal with the history and epistemology of Librarianship and Information Science; verify which works correlate historical and epistemological aspects of librarianship with Information Science; elicit some reflections on the historical and epistemological relations from the analysis of this research. The data collection was carried out in the Journal Portal of Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) database of the Scientific Electronic Library Online, Library and Information Science Abstracts, Web of Science and Scopus. Based on the analysis of the corpus of 21 articles, the most predominant themes were the history of Librarianship, the development of Information Science, the documentation of Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, and interdisciplinarity. It is important to deepen the historical and epistemological relations of Librarianship and Information Science in national scientific production since research shows a lack of theoretical depth in the studies retrieved from the corpus.