"I'm always a bit undecided about which term truly deserves the capital letter: Information? Knowledge? Truth? Why is it that there is a Science of Information, but Knowledge only needs Management? Weinberger seems to think that there are two things we mean when we talk about information. One sounds like ready-reference information, like the kind of trivia that seems to be fairly easy to find from Google. The other, which I think is perhaps intended to be Information with the capital is, 'a reality-based picture of the world.' This is a lot like what I would call Knowledge, information that fits into the context, that maps with the other pieces of a world view. Really I think Information Science is about the process, how information becomes Knowledge. We're alchemists who really can turn base materials into gold. That's the analysis we provide, the organization, the value-add, placing the information we provide in context.
The flip side of this is that we can, and do, dole out information, no capital required. We can do this because we are experts in process and context. That's why we have reference interviews: so we can understand the context for the request. We can move between the context of the asker to the contexts of resources of all varieties. We can pull information from resources print and electronic, because we can understand the context the information resides in as well as how it might fit into the asker's world view.
Weinberger doesn't want to deal with information, but he does like context (and contact.) While I don't mind information much, I have to agree that it's the context/contact that really interests me."
