Philosophical foundations and research relevance: issues for information research

This paper examines three ideas that affect the nature of research in information science: (1) the fact of the incoherent nature of information science, which results from the concept of ‘information’ being dealt with at different integrative levels; (2) the lack of an over-arching philosophical framework that might guide the development of methods; and (3) the problem of grounding research in the reality of everyday professional practice. It is suggested that, at one level, phenomenology offers an integrative philosophical perspective that might also help to resolve the research/practice spl