A history of the Department of Information Science of The City University

Abstract

A review is presented of the developments from the found ing of the original course in 'Collecting and Communicating Scientific Knowledge' for the Certificate of the Institute of Information Scientists in 1961, to the work of the present day Department of Information Science of The City University which now runs five postgraduate courses. The expansion of the teaching includes not only scientific and technical informa tion but also courses on biomedical and pharmaceutical infor mation, business information, legal and community informa tion and research and development in information systems. The latter topic has given rise to a new part-time postgraduate course in Information Systems and Technology. A wide rang ing research programme includes work on information retrieval systems and the user interface and information flow and dissemination. It is concluded that further progress of the Department will depend on policy developments.