The Intellectual Characteristics of the Information Field: Heritage and Substance Ping Zhang 328 Hinds Hall, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: pzhang@syr.edu Jasy Liew Suet Yan and Katie DeVries Hassman 337 Hinds Hall, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail {jliewsue; klhassma}@syr.edu As the information field (IField) becomes more recog- nized by different constituencies for education and research, the need to better understand its intellectual characteristics becomes more compelling. Although there are various conceptualizations of the IField, to date, in-depth studies based on empirical evidence are scarce. This article reports a study that fills this gap. We focus on the first five ISchools in the ICaucus as a proxy to repre- sent the IField. The intellectual characteristics are depicted by two independent sets of data on tenure track faculty as knowledge contributors: their intellectual heri- tages and the intellectual substance in their journal pub- lications. We use a critical analysis method to examine doctoral training areas and 3 years of journal publica- tions. Our results indicate that (a) the IField can be better conceptualized with empirical support by a four-component model that includes People, Informa- tion, Technology, and Management, as predicted by the I-Model (Zhang & Benjamin, 2007); (b) the ISchools’ faculty members are diverse, interdisciplinary, and mul- tidisciplinary as shown by their intellectual heritages, by their research foci, by journals in which they publish, by the contexts within which they conduct research, and by the levels of analysis in research investigations; (c) the five ISchools share similarities while evincing differences in both faculty heritages and intellectual sub- stances; (d) ISchool tenure track faculty members do not collaborate much with each other within or across schools although there is great potential; and (e) intellec- tual heritages are not good predictors of scholars’ intel- lectual substance. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings on IField identity, IField devel- opment, new ISchool formation and existing ISchool evo- lution, faculty career development, and collaboration within the IField. Introduction The recent information movement (Liddy, 2012) or I-School movement (King, 2006) has formally established the information field as a scientific field. A scientific field is evidenced by measures (Webber, 2003), such as existing aca- demic units within universities (commonly known as the ISchools in many universities), offering some academic degrees and graduating students, having an international com- munity formally gathered at annual international conferences (the IConferences), having professional associations (the ICaucus), and having its own identity (the IField). Although the word information started to appear in the names of the academic schools in the 1960s (Olson & Grudin, 2009), it is currently accepted that the origins of the ISchools can be traced back to 1988, when three schools (Pittsburgh, Syracuse, and Drexel) formed the “Gang of Three” (http://ischools.org/history/origins/). In 2001, the “Gang of Five” was formed with the addition of Michigan and Washington. As more schools continued to join forces, in 2005, an organizational entity, the ICaucus (http:// ischools.org/), was officially formed to represent the IField. With a clear community identity, the ICaucus organizes annual international conferences: The first one was in 2005 with 265 registered attendees and the most recent one, the seventh, was held in February 2012 with 476 registered attendees (Liddy, 2012). The ICaucus also continues to attract and accept members. At the time of its seventh annual conference, the ICaucus had 36 members from 11 countries in four continents (Liddy, 2012). The fast progress of the information field has gained attention from other disciplines, funding agencies, recruit- ers, and scholars. For example, Grudin states that “we may be witnessing the birth of a new star in the academic Received December 10, 2012; accepted January 17, 2013 © 2013 ASIS&T • Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.22941 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ••(••):••–••, 2013