Abstract: Since the renaming of Information Resources Management as a first-level discipline, the reconstruction of the core categories and knowledge system of the discipline has become a core issue in discipline development. This study, grounded in the contemporary context of constructing an independent knowledge system for Chinese disciplines, systematically discusses three core questions: the origin of the discipline, the meaning of its content, and the structure of its system. First, it extracts three core characteristics, “sequential annotation, in-depth revelation, and value transformation” from the historical logic of the discipline's evolution, establishing its essential core. Second, through comparative analysis and commonality extraction of the basic categories of the second-level discipline group, it constructs a core category system imbued with the philosophical wisdom of naming Information Resources Management as a discipline. Then, using these three characteristics as a logical starting point, it builds a theoretical framework for the knowledge system based on these core categories, positioning disciplinary knowledge along three dimensions: management object, management process, and management value, and presenting the abstract depth of knowledge through three levels: theory, method, and practice. This framework integrates and deepens the core categories, providing a systematic analytical tool for the construction of the knowledge system, research positioning, and academic evaluation of Information Resources Management. Finally, this article takes the research of Information Resources Management discipline in response to the questions of the people, China, the world, and the times as a clue, and clarifies the value orientation and future direction of the independent knowledge system.

Key words: Information resources management, Core categories, Independent knowledge system, Theoretical framework, Discipline construction