The subject’s foundation is people’s capacity for development, individually and in groups, through benefitting from physical and digital societal resources in the form of information, research, literature and other media, as well as various kinds of activities and programmes. It covers and integrates skills and knowledge in the humanities, social sciences and technology.

Library and Information Science can be broadly separated into five different areas: the library in the community, information practices, the organisation of knowledge, information management, scientific publication and communication.

The first area is linked to library science and can be understood as a collective term, which includes libraries’ work in formal and informal education and overarching issues of cultural policy, as well as the development of libraries as institutions. It may include examining the history of libraries, their task, organisation, activities and librarianship as a profession, its conditions and development.

The other areas relate to the chain of information or communication that is fundamental to information science. This chain focuses on how information is created and generated, collected, registered, stored, processed, conveyed and transferred, as well as used and reused. The concept of a document is important, often partnered with perspectives that are interested in the specific conditions for these activities in different academic disciplines, different institutions and different user groups.