In the wake of the Information Technology (IT) revolution, the field of information science (IS) has emerged and very quickly become an increasingly significant academic as well as practical discipline. Recently, the American Society for Information Science (ASIS) held a summit meeting in Boston. Richard Zwies (2000) described the results of this summit meeting as constituting a critical event in the development of the field of information architecture, which encompasses system design and development, information retrieval, graphic design, knowledge of organizational and user behavior, and skills in the area of existing and emerging technologies. Though IS is a relatively new discipline, it has quickly generated a myriad number of studies that attempt to identify the most critical areas needing research and/or refinement as the field itself advances. The purpose of this report is to draw upon the literature to identify six specific topic areas or problems in IS needing research and describe the rationale for conducting research into these areas.
First, however, it is important to note that while this report will consider only six of the critical concerns facing the new IS discipline, there are any number of issues that may be as significant as the problems discussed herein. Zwies (2000), for example, highlighted the fact that as a new field is being developed (and despite its dramatic advances in record time, IS remains a new discipline), creating congruence and synergy between and among its various subspecialities is a challenging and even daunting task. Magid Igbaria (1999) also pointed out that what is being developed and expanded is a "virtual society," a society that is inherently complex, data- and information-rich, and fraught with numerous uncertainties. Limited research has been conducted to study the myriad issues generated by the virtual society phenomenon, with research tending to be focused on individuals and,...