Nature of I-Schools

Frankly speaking, it is after I came to IST when I first heard about the term "I-school", and my understanding of this term at the beginning is places where researchers from different areas work together, and where education is of a multi-disciplinary nature. I-schools have various origins, such as information science, library science, computer science, HCI, economics, management, policy, sociology, etc., but all have the same focus: information. The cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary nature is probably the most distinguishing feature of I-schools compared to other traditional disciplines.

As being a computer science student for six years, I found myself quite interested in research areas where different aspects of technology and people are combined. It is not easy to say which side is more important, but lots of people begin to believe that studies based on a more comprehensive view is probable to achieve valuable and even unexpected results.

It is obvious that today's technology is highly relied on the understanding of people's role in different domains of the society. Traditional disciplines of information like library science, computer science, etc. are increasingly intersected with disciplines on the social side. The recognition that study of these areas separately cannot provide solutions to the complicated problems existing in today's social environment encourages more effort devoted to this newly emerging area. Instead of focusing on the technical aspects of information generation, storage, distribution, retrieval, etc., I-school also concerns the people side of these activities. Though information flow is extremely variable, understanding of certain patterns in different domains can facilitate information usage in those areas, which in turn can have great impact on people and technology in that society.

Imagine ISchools: information, initiate, intellect, impact, innovate, introspect, idealize, insight, imagine?