Even taking into account historical and structural features, it is evident that a large part of the success of Finnish research in LIS is a result of the long-time influence of a couple of individuals and their interaction with their environ- ment on various levels. Both Kalervo Ja¨rvelin and Pertti Vakkari worked at the Department of Information Studies in Tampere before Marjatta Okko, and they both were among those who rallied against her nomination. But once she was nominated and began her work at the department, they cooperated with her. Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari who started to study together in 1972 formed an innovative duo quite early that has produced many impor- tant scientific and organizational ideas over the years, even if their profiles as researchers have differed. While Ja¨rvelin’s strongest area has always been information retrieval, Vakkari’s interests have been more varied, ranging from reading and user studies to the nature and history of LIS, and more recently interactive information retrieval. But the field where their interests have been united and which was revolutionary in the Finnish LIS research in the early 1980s was the study of information needs, information seeking behavior and use. In that area, they developed some theoretical ideas that still have influence both in Finland and internationally. They even anticipated some great paradigmatic shifts in the overall theoretical approach of LIS, such as Dervin and Nilan’s (1986)revolution of perspective in information seeking research.
Some of their appearances together have had the character of manifestos.
Already in one of their first joint academic publications, the title of which in English translation is ‘‘On the research of information needs and library use’’
(1981), they laid the foundation of their future work in defining the research objectives of LIS in a new way, freeing it from the direct dependency of libraries as institutions. We could cite long passages from the book, espe- cially from the epilogue that they wrote together and titled challengingly
‘‘Toward a wider approach in the study of information needs and seeking,’’
and acknowledge the straightforwardness and freshness of the ideas, long before they became common goods in the field of LIS:
In the study of information needs and library use, there is often on top a pragmatic motive to seek for knowledge for developing different information service systems. That
has not led to any extensive advancement of the research in the field. Lack of advance- ment is evident. We can even speak of stagnation. In order to have progress, the goals of the research have to be set over the boundaries of a certain group of channels or services.
We have to strive for fruitful and interesting approaches. We cannot, then, take as our point of departure institutions performing certain tasks and the presumption that they will develop. Instead, we should focus our research on the human action that serves as the basis for the use of these institutions. To move forward, we need to find new, fruitful perspectives and questions. We suggest that we should study information needs and library use from the point of view of information needs and library users.
We believe that research must start with the premise that information need, the ac- quisition of information, and its use should be studied as it appears in each composite system of human action, for example from work. If we pursue this tactic, we should begin by analyzing actions, where information needs arrive, and the nature of those information needs rather than the use of channels for information. Only in this way can one fruitfully think about how and from where information is acquired. [y]
We think that library and information science cannot be limited only to study library and information service institutions. The study of information seeking and needs in itself presupposes a wider approach. In another case, we cannot get a sensible picture of what affects the functioning and use of the institution. More generally, this would mean that we could not form any clear understanding of the general phenomena that incur in- formation needs and seeking. [y] If LIS is understood only as a study of libraries and information service institutions, it would only be a set of technical skills for running these institutions. Even as such it would be incomplete, because it could not give suffi- cient tools for developing the work of these institutions. There is a need to depart consciously from the boundaries of library and information institutions and wide´n the perspective even outside them. (Ja¨rvelin & Vakkari, 1981, pp. 125–127)
It is clear that Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari did not pull their ideas out of the air.
Their shift in perspective was in many ways a result of extensive reading of international research literature. It is interesting from the point of view of the history of LIS that some central sources that they cite were written in the German language by writers such as G. Wersig, W. Kunz and H. Rittel. But even with foreign sources, Ja¨rvelin’s and Vakkari’s view on LIS was a revolutionary shift in perspective that the Marxist-oriented and/or institu- tion-centered Finnish LIS community had difficulty swallowing. But their approach also was, as they said, a conscious departure from the institution- centered paradigm. It was interpreted as if they turned their backs on the professional field of libraries and information services, which has caused some domestic resistance to their ideas that has followed their careers. It is possible that the existence of Finnish LIS education and research on the university level saved the new ideas from being crushed by vocational interests. Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari formulated their theoretical view as part of an academic dialogue, and that is the way it has been understood in the academic world. On the other hand, those who had different views did not
Research in Information Studies in Finland 161
value the scientific character of research less. They just had a different conception of LIS.
As the national scholarly journal in the field got on its feet, Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari started to develop their ideas further and published, now and then, new formulations and clarifications of their initial standpoint. In 1982, they again stressed that, because library and information services have no a priori value, the basis for evaluating and planning them must be sought in the actions that they serve (Ja¨rvelin & Vakkari, 1982).
Some of their theoretical formulations have influenced later researchers years after they were published; for example, Vakkari’s idea of the ‘‘contact function’’ as a characteristic of library activity (Vakkari, 1987b) has been cited many times in studies concerning libraries and Ja¨rvelin’s ‘‘two simple classifications for research on information seeking’’ (Ja¨rvelin, 1987) have inspired researchers of task-based information usage (e.g. Bystro¨m, 1999, pp. 44–45). The final formulation of their view on the nature of the field,
‘‘Library and information science – a science of information seeking’’, was published in 1988 (Ja¨rvelin & Vakkari, 1988a; see alsoJa¨rvelin, 1989, where he presents, among other innovations,Dervin & Nilan, 1986for the Finnish audience).
The discussion in Finland about the nature of LIS raged high during the 1980s, inspiring Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari to start digging into the history of LIS as a discipline and study the distribution of volumes of research in different subfields of the field. Vakkari started this line of research by writing a history of Finnish LIS research (Vakkari, 1985; Vakkari, 1986a). Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari then proceeded by developing jointly a preliminary analysis of the distribution of research in international LIS journals (Ja¨rvelin & Vakkari, 1988b) and in domestic research literature (Ja¨rvelin & Vakkari, 1989) In these articles they refined the methodology that has since been successfully used for further investigations (e.g. Aarek, Ja¨rvelin, Kajberg, Klasson, &
Vakkari, 1992).
Ja¨rvelin’s and Vakkari’s conception of the nature of LIS has not gone unopposed in Finland. One of the most tenacious opponents of the ‘‘LIS as science of information seeking’’ paradigm has been Dr. Vesa Suominen. The most elaborate presentation of his views is his dissertation ‘‘Filling empty space. A treatise on semiotic structures in information retrieval, in docu- mentation, and in related research’’ of 1997 (Suominen, 1997). During his career, he has defended a conception of library science as a more concretely library-oriented research field with an emphasis on documents and contents (as opposed to users) seen from an hermeneutical and semiotic angle. In a recent heated debate on the nature of LIS education and research in Finland
and its alleged alienation from the (public) library world, he even stated that, ‘‘as for me, I would claim that the greatest disaster that has met Finn- ish library education is just ‘the science of information seeking,’’’ where he directly refers to Ja¨rvelin’s and Vakkari’s manifesto of 1988 (Suominen, 2004; see also Suominen, 1986; Suominen, 2002). Suominen’s critique of
‘‘userism’’ in LIS has also been noted internationally (e.g. Hjørland, 2002;
Noruzi, 2004), although he has published only sparingly in more well known languages.
The conception of LIS proposed by Ja¨rvelin and Vakkari got its final symbolic crowning when the official Finnish name of the department and the discipline was changed to Information Studies in 1994 (the English name had already been changed 1991 because that could be done without the blessing of the university administration). Another symbolic step was the transfer of the Tampere Department in 2001 from the Faculty of Social Sciences into the newly established Faculty of Information Sciences.