The Many Histories of Information

This article discusses the historiography of information. It argues that information history is represented by (at least) six well-defined subdisciplines (archival history, book and publishing history, communication history, computing history, information science history, and library history), each in agreement about its own methods and core literature, but which it shares with none of the other five. The article identifies books that could be read in graduate-level courses on information history that are taught either chronologically or thematically. It also identifies historical questions that cut across the six subdisciplines.