Interdisciplinary Needs: The Current Context

MEETINGTHE INTERDISCIPLINARY NEEDS of today’s library users begins with understanding the activities that create these needs. The answers to three basic questions provide the basis for a common discourse about those activities and their place in the knowledge system: (1)why and how do interdisciplinary activities emerge? (2) what form do they take? and (3) where are they located in institutions? Interdisciplinary activities are the result of historical and contemporary developments in disciplines, professions, and new interdisciplinary fields. Recent accounts indicate that interdisciplinarity is no longer peripheral to the academy but is regarded in many quarters as essential to the knowledge system. The cumulative effect of alternative organizations of knowledge and new social and cognitive forms exposes a lack of fit between interdisciplinary needs and existing knowledge taxonomies and classification schemes.