Interdiscipline
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An interdiscipline or inter-discipline is a field that involves two or more academic disciplines but which also meets the formal criteria (such as dedicated research journals, conferences and university departments) to be considered a discipline in its own right. A field may be both a discipline and an interdiscipline at the same time, such as demography as explained below. A field may also be regarded as a discipline in some countries but an interdiscipline in other countries, such as information science.
Giesecke (1981)[1] says about educational research ("pedagogy") that is an "aporetic science", i.e. an interdiscipline.
Tengström (1993)[2] emphases that cross-disciplinary research is a process, not a state or structure. He differentiates three levels of ambition regarding cross-disciplinary research:
- The pluridisciplinary or multidisciplinarity level
- The genuine cross-disciplinary level: interdisciplinarity
- The discipline-forming level transdisciplinarity
What is described here is a view of social fields as dynamic and changing. Library and information science is viewed as a field that started as a multidisciplinary approach based on literature, psychology, sociology, management, computer science etc., which is developing towards an academic discipline in its own right.