Over the last four decades computers and the internet have become an intrinsic part of all our lives, but this speed of development has left related philosophical enquiry behind. Featuring the work of computer scientists and philosophers, these essays provide an overview of an exciting new area of philosophy that is still taking shape.

The book on Ontology in Information Science explores a broad set of ideas and presents some of the state-of-the-art research in this field concisely in 12 chapters. This book provides researchers and practitioners working in the field of ontology and information science an opportunity to share their theories, methodologies, experiences, and experimental results related to ontology development and application in various areas. It also includes the design aspects of domain ontologies considering the architecture, development strategy, and selection of tools. The intended audience of this book will mainly consist of researchers, research students, and practitioners in the field of ontology and information science.

Ontology has been a subject of many studies carried out in artificial intelligence (AI) and information system communities. Ontology has become an important component of the semantic web, covering a variety of knowledge domains. Although building domain ontologies still remains a big challenge with regard to its designing and implementation, there are still many areas that need to create ontologies. Information Science (IS) is one of these areas that need a unified ontology model to facilitate information access among the heterogeneous data resources and share a common understanding of the domain knowledge. Recently, the development of domain ontologies has become increasingly important for knowledge level interoperation and information integration. They provide functional features for AI and knowledge representation. Domain Ontology is a central foundation of growth for the semantic web that provides a general knowledge for correspondence and communication among heterogeneous systems. Particularly with a rise of ontology in the artificial intelligence (AI) domain, it can be seen as an almost inevitable development in computer science and AI in general.

Information is a recognized fundamental notion across the sciences and humanities, which is crucial to understanding physical computation, communication, and human cognition. The Philosophy of Information brings together the most important perspectives on information. It includes major technical approaches, while also setting out the historical backgrounds of information as well as its contemporary role in many academic fields. Also, special unifying topics are high-lighted that play across many fields, while we also aim at identifying relevant themes for philosophical reflection. There is no established area yet of Philosophy of Information, and this Handbook can help shape one, making sure it is well grounded in scientific expertise. As a side benefit, a book like this can facilitate contacts and collaboration among diverse academic milieus sharing a common interest in information.• First overview of the formal and technical issues involved in the philosophy of information• Integrated presentation of major mathematical approaches to information, form computer science, information theory, and logic• Interdisciplinary themes across the traditional boundaries of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with (1) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and (2) the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It does so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical goal is to describe what the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information.

Historical Information Science is an extensive review and bibliographic essay, backed by almost 6,000 citations, detailing developments in information technology since the advent of personal computers and the convergence of several social science and humanities disciplines in historical computing. Its focus is on the access, preservation, and analysis of historical information (primarily in electronic form) and the relationships between new methodology and instructional media, techniques, and research trends in library special collections, digital libraries, data archives, and museums.