Sunday, May 24, 2015
Friday, May 1, 2015
Protest trails death of Kogi radio workers in blast
By Editor
THOUSANDS of people marched through the streets of Okene, Kogi State on Tuesday to protest the killing of four members of staff of Tao FM radio in a bomb blast.
The spontaneous protest march was also marked by the closure of all markets, banks, offices and commercial ventures in Kogi Central Senatorial District in honour of those killed and injured in the deadly night attack on the popular community radio.
Protesters called on the federal and state governments as well as the security agencies to unmask those behind the attack.
“We will not allow this dastardly act to be swept under the carpet like other unsolved killings of the past,” said a female protester.
“We must find and punish those behind this crime. Enough is enough. This land belongs to all of us. No one can terrorize us,” another protester said
The protesters later marched to the palace of the Ohinoyi of Ebira, Alhaji Ado Ibrahim, in Okene, where they urged him to do something to end the terrorist acts in his domain and the monarch promised to do all in his powers to end the killings.
The attack on the radio station on Monday night in which four staff died, one was injured and broadcast equipment and the building housing the station, has led to an outpouring of emotions and pledges of support for the station with some people demanding that an account be opened for donations to bring back the influential Tao FM radio station.
Images of Ebiraland: Sketch History of Ebira (Itopa Ebira)
Images of Ebiraland: Sketch History of Ebira (Itopa Ebira): ORIGIN OF THE EBIRAS An elder beats the Agidibo to salute the spirits (Photo by EbiraView) Ebira ...
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
NITDA SCHOLARSHIP
2015 NITDA Postgraduate Scholarship Application – Apply Now
Posted By: Idaerefagha Allisonon: April 23, 2015
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) with its mandate of transforming Nigeria into an IT driven economy for global competitiveness and the dire need to bridge the digital divide, has since 2010 established a scholarship scheme for Masters (MSc) and Doctorate (PhD) degrees in relevant areas of Information Technology (IT) obtainable in Nigeria or Foreign/Overseas universities.
Criteria
The Scholarship award is strictly based on merit and is equally distributed between the six geo-political zones for PhD and the 36 states and the FCT for MSc.
Duration
The Masters program will run for 1 year while the Doctorate program is expected to run for 3 years.
Eligibility
PhD : University lecturers with MSc in any Information Technology related field are eligible to apply for sponsorship.
MSc : All citizens of Nigeria with First Class or Second Class (Upper) Honours Bachelors degree (BSc) in Information Technology related field.
Application Deadline : 31st May, 2015.
How to apply :
Interested and eligible candidates should click on
Note : A comprehensive aptitude test will be conducted to determine successful candidates for the award. Only candidates found eligible will be invited.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Irate youths attack MTN office 0
By Our Reporter on April 22, 2015 COVER, National From FRED ITUA, Abuja
The growing xenophobic attacks on Nigerians and other African nationals in South Africa, yesterday re-echoed in Abuja, as some youths, who went wild during a protest, attacked the regional office of MTN in the nation’s capital.
According to eyewitness account, the youths converged on the premises of the expansive South African firm at about 1pm, carrying placards with different inscriptions.
One of the witnesses, a security guard in one of the nearby offices, who did not want his name in print, told Daily Sun that more than 100 youths participated in the protest.
Checks revealed that the protesting youths gathered at the Maitama office of the company under the aegis of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). This could not, however, be verified as at the time of filing this report.
Speaking further, the security guard said the youths, who were chanting solidarity songs went violent minutes after arriving in the facility. He said many of them jumped the perimeter fence and immediately vandalised some facilities before security agents intervened.
He revealed that other protesters forced their way through the entrance gate, adding that the private security guards, who were overpowered by the protesting youths, appeared helpless as the irate youths carried out their attacks.
“At about 11am, some protesters came here. They were very peaceful. They dropped their letter with management. We did not witness any violence. But this particular group came and was very violent.
“From the inscriptions on their banner, they are students. I saw NANS. Before we could even call them to order, they went violent and jumped the perimeter fence. Others went through the main gate. We are lucky that nobody was injured during the protest,” the security guard said.
Apparently worried that more attacks might follow, the MTN office, which services the entire Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and some northern states, immediately shut down its operations.
Customers were turned back and told to return when the office would be reopened.
When Daily Sun visited the office, one of the workers confirmed that no date had been fixed for resumption of services.
The staff stated that services would be suspended until the xenophobic attacks abated and normalcy returned to troubled South Africa.
Meanwhile, a combined team of security agents has condoned off the facility and armoured vehicles stationed in and around the area to forestall further attack.
KASHAMU TO KEYAMO: YOU’RE IGNORANT
By Our Reporter on April 24, 2015 Politics • Says U.S Govt never asked for his extradition
By AKEEB ALARAPE
Embattled senator-elect for Ogun East, Prince Buruji Kashamu, has picked holes in the outburst of a Lagos-based lawyer, Festus Keyamo, that his election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was morally wrong.
Keyamo, who faulted Kashamu’s nomination by the PDP during a programme with the title, ‘Legal angle on Nigeria Info FM,’ had said the senator-elect may not have time to represent his people as he would spend more time facing probes over alleged drug trafficking than attending sessions as a senator.
But in a response, yesterday, through his lawyer, Kashamu said Keyamo’s outburst was politically-motivated and not from a legal point of view.
The statement, signed by Kashamu’s lawyer, Ajibola Oluyede, specifically stated that Keyamo displayed “a total ignorance of the incontrovertible facts of the matter,” adding that he made the statement “without regard to his learning as a lawyer and his undoubted proficiency in the profession.
“Buruji Kashamu is not just merely claiming that he is innocent; two different courts in England, in two different judgments, have found and declared that Buruji Kashamu is innocent of the allegations made against him in the US court:
The first is the English High Court of Justice (Kings Bench Division) in its judgment of January 2000 in which it said that the US Authorities Actually knew that Kashamu is innocent when they suppressed evidence of an identification parade in which the ring leader of the gang (that allegedly confessed that they had a West African link called “ALAJI) said that Buruji Kashamu was not the man involved with them.
“The English High Court for this reason nullified and set aside the favourable judgment obtained by the U.S authorities against Kashamu on the basis of this suppressed exculpatory evidence,” he said.
“The second judgment is that of 10th January 2003 in which District Judge Tim Workman expressly found (after 3 years of trial involving extensive oral evidence from both sides and copious documentary evidence) that the U.S Government had provided false evidence and eventually held that Kashamu was not involved in the crimes alleged and should be discharged.
The U.S authorities did not appeal against these judgments and have made no move whatsoever in the last 11 years to extradite Kashamu,” the statement read in parts.
The senator-elect said as at 23 April 2015, neither the U.S Government nor any of its agencies has asked for his extradiction, which Keyamo alluded to in his speech.
“The second significant error in Festus’ outburst is the misrepresentation to the Nigerian public that the US Government has asked for Kashamu’s extradition.
“The truth, which the Attorney General has himself confirmed in a case pending in the Supreme Court of Nigeria and by letter issued on 25th January 2015, is that the U.S Government has never asked for the extradition of Kashamu at any time up till today 23rd April 2015 (yesterday), the statement added.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
INFORMATION SCIENCE
Information Science is the study of information and how it is used by people within organisations.
Information Science is important because information plays a vital role in just about everything we do in modern society. Accordingly, information systems are vital to the operation of modern organisations and information scientists are involved in almost every field of endeavour imaginable. People with information science skills are in high demand, and there are many and varied career opportunities in fields such as business, science, education, health, music and mass media.
Information Science sits at the intersection of technology, people, and organisations. It is a distinct discipline and has a focus on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) used by people to manage information within organisations.
The study of information usage covers activities such as information collection, processing, storage and retrieval, presentation, and communication of information. It also encompasses study of the organisational contexts in which information is used, and of information systems that support information usage.
Information Science is a field that is changing rapidly. Some of these changes are driven by technology. For example, the rapid adoption of mobile devices over the past few years has created opportunities for new applications and business models. Still other changes are driven by organisational or business needs. For example, in a connected world, businesses increasingly need to manage their supply chains as large-scale coordinated networks. There is also greater demand for more "intelligent" information systems.
The Department of Information Science at Otago focuses on the following areas:
• Artificial Intelligence applications, including computational modelling, evolutionary computing, machine learning and data mining
• Databases, including geographic and spatial information systems
• Distributed information systems, including multi-agent systems, and wireless and mobile applications
• Health informatics
• Human-computer interfaces, including multimedia systems and augmented reality
• Information assurance and security
• Information systems development and management
• Social networking and organisational computing, including decision support systems
• Software engineering and application sof tware development.
Information science
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with information theory or library science.
The Ancient Library of Alexandria, an early form of information storage and retrieval.
Information science
General aspects
• Information access • Information architecture
• Information management
• Information retrieval
• Information seeking • Information society
• Knowledge organization • Ontology • Taxonomy
• Philosophy of information
• Science, technology and society
Related fields and sub-fields
• Bibliometrics • Categorization
• Censorship • Classification
• Computer data storage • Cultural studies
• Data modeling • Informatics
• Information technology
• Intellectual freedom
• Intellectual property • Memory
• Library and information science
• Preservation • Privacy
• Information science portal
Information science is an interdisciplinary field primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information.[1] Practitioners within the field study the application and usage of knowledge in organizations, along with the interaction between people, organizations and any existing information systems, with the aim of creating, replacing, improving, or understanding information systems. Information science is often (mistakenly) considered a branch of Library science; however, it predates computer science and is actually a broad, interdisciplinary field, incorporating not only aspects of computer science, but often diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science, commerce, communications, law, library science, museology, management, mathematics, philosophy, public policy, and the social sciences.
Information science should not be confused with information theory or library science. Information theory is the study of a particular mathematical concept of information. Information science as an academic discipline is often taught in combination with Library science as Library and Information Science. Library science as such is a field related to the dissemination of information through libraries making use of the principles of information science. Information science deals with all the processes and techniques pertaining to the information life cycle, including capture, generation, packaging, dissemination, transformation, refining, repackaging, usage, storage, communication, protection, presentation etc. in any possible manner.
Foundations
Scope and approach
Information science focuses on understanding problems from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and then applying information and other technologies as needed. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technology within that system. In this respect, one can see information science as a response to technological determinism, the belief that technology "develops by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available and the creativity of its developers. It must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society."[2]
Many universities have entire colleges, departments or schools devoted to the study of information science, while numerous information-science scholars work in disciplines such as communication, computer science, law, library science, and sociology. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus (see List of I-Schools), but numerous others besides these also have comprehensive information foci.
Within information science, current issues as of 2013 include:
• human–computer interaction
• groupware
• the semantic web
• value-sensitive design
• iterative design processes
• the ways people generate, use and find information
Definitions of information science
An early definition of Information science (going back to 1968, the year when the American Documentation Institute renamed itself as the American Society for Information Science and Technology) states:
"Information science is that discipline that investigates the properties and behavior of information, the forces governing the flow of information, and the means of processing information for optimum accessibility and usability. It is concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information. This includes the investigation of information representations in both natural and artificial systems, the use of codes for efficient message transmission, and the study of information processing devices and techniques such as computers and their programming systems. It is an interdisciplinary science derived from and related to such fields as mathematics, logic, linguistics, psychology, computer technology, operations research, the graphic arts, communications, library science, management, and other similar fields. It has both a pure science component, which inquires into the subject without regard to its application, and an applied science component, which develops services and products." (Borko, 1968, p.3).[3]
Some authors use informatics as a synonym for information science. This is especially true when related to the concept developed by A. I. Mikhailov and other Soviet authors in the mid-1960s. The Mikhailov school saw informatics as a discipline related to the study of scientific information.[4] Informatics is difficult to precisely define because of the rapidly evolving and interdisciplinary nature of the field.
Regional differences and international terminology complicate the problem. Some people[which?] note that much of what is called "Informatics" today was once called "Information Science" - at least in fields such as Medical Informatics. For example, when library scientists began also to use the phrase "Information Science" to refer to their work, the term "informatics" emerged:
• in the United States as a response by computer scientists to distinguish their work from that of library science
• in Britain as a term for a science of information that studies natural, as well as artificial or engineered, information-processing systems
Another term discussed as a synonym for "information studies" is "information systems". Brian Campbell Vickery's Information Systems (1973) places information systems within IS. Ellis, Allen, & Wilson (1999), on the other hand, provide a bibliometric investigation describing the relation between two different fields: "information science" and "information systems".
Philosophy of information
Main article: Philosophy of information
Philosophy of information (PI) studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of computer science, information technology, and philosophy. It includes the investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences, as well as the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to its philosophical problems.[5]
Ontology
Main article: Ontology (information science)
In computer science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between those concepts. It can be used to reason about the entities within that domain and may be used to describe the domain.
More specifically, an ontology is a model for describing the world that consists of a set of types, properties, and relationship types. Exactly what is provided around these varies, but they are the essentials of an ontology. There is also generally an expectation that there be a close resemblance between the real world and the features of the model in an ontology.[6]
In theory, an ontology is a "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation".[7] An ontology renders shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations.[8]
Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, systems engineering, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontologies is also fundamental to the definition and use of an enterprise architecture framework.
Careers
Information scientist
Main article: Information scientist
An information scientist is an individual, usually with a relevant subject degree or high level of subject knowledge, providing focused information to scientific and technical research staff in industry, a role quite distinct from and complementary to that of a librarian. The title also applies to an individual carrying out research in information science.
Information professional
Main article: Information professional
An information professional is an individual who preserves, organizes, and disseminates information. Information professionals are skilled in the organization and retrieval of recorded knowledge. Traditionally, their work has been with print materials, but these skills are being increasingly used with electronic, visual, audio, and digital materials. Information professionals work in a variety of public, private, non-profit, and academic institutions.
History
See also: Information history
Early beginnings
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German polymath who wrote primarily in Latin and French. His fields of study were Metaphysics, Mathematics, Theodicy.
Information science, in studying the collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information has origins in the common stock of human knowledge. Information analysis has been carried out by scholars at least as early as the time of the Abyssinian Empire with the emergence of cultural depositories, what is today known as libraries and archives.[9] Institutionally, information science emerged in the 19th century along with many other social science disciplines. As a science, however, it finds its institutional roots in the history of science, beginning with publication of the first issues of Philosophical Transactions, generally considered the first scientific journal, in 1665 by the Royal Society (London).
The institutionalization of science occurred throughout the 18th Century. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin established the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first library owned by a group of public citizens, which quickly expanded beyond the realm of books and became a center of scientific experiment, and which hosted public exhibitions of scientific experiments.[10] Benjamin Franklin invested a town in Massachusetts with a collection of books that the town voted to make available to all free of charge, forming the first Public Library.[11] Academie de Chirurgia (Paris) published Memoires pour les Chirurgiens, generally considered to be the first medical journal, in 1736. The American Philosophical Society, patterned on the Royal Society (London), was founded in Philadelphia in 1743. As numerous other scientific journals and societies were founded, Alois Senefelder developed the concept of lithography for use in mass printing work in Germany in 1796.
19th century
Joseph Marie Jacquard
By the 19th Century the first signs of information science emerged as separate and distinct from other sciences and social sciences but in conjunction with communication and computation. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a punched card system to control operations of the cloth weaving loom in France. It was the first use of "memory storage of patterns" system.[12] As chemistry journals emerged throughout the 1820s and 1830s,[13] Charles Babbage developed his "difference engine," the first step towards the modern computer, in 1822 and his "analytical engine” by 1834. By 1843 Richard Hoe developed the rotary press, and in 1844 Samuel Morse sent the first public telegraph message. By 1848 William F. Poole begins the Index to Periodical Literature, the first general periodical literature index in the US.
In 1854 George Boole published An Investigation into Laws of Thought..., which lays the foundations for Boolean algebra, which is later used in information retrieval.[14] In 1860 a congress was held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress did not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants returned home with Stanislao Cannizzaro's outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.[15]
By 1865, the Smithsonian Institution began a catalog of current scientific papers, which became the International Catalogue of Scientific Papers in 1902.[16] The following year the Royal Society began publication of its Catalogue of Papers in London. In 1868, Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and S. W. Soule produced the first practical typewriter. By 1872 Lord Kelvin devised an analogue computer to predict the tides, and by 1875 Frank Stephen Baldwin was granted the first US patent for a practical calculating machine that performs four arithmetic functions.[13] Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison invented the telephone and phonograph in 1876 and 1877 respectively, and the American Library Association was founded in Philadelphia. In 1879 Index Medicus was first issued by the Library of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, with John Shaw Billings as librarian, and later the library issues Index Catalogue, which achieved an international reputation as the most complete catalog of medical literature.[17]
European documentation
The discipline of documentation science, which marks the earliest theoretical foundations of modern information science, emerged in the late part of the 19th Century in Europe together with several more scientific indexes whose purpose was to organize scholarly literature. Many information science historians cite Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895.[18] A second generation of European Documentalists emerged after the Second World War, most notably Suzanne Briet. However, "information science" as a term is not popularly used in academia until sometime in the latter part of the 20th Century.[19]
Documentalists emphasized the utilitarian integration of technology and technique toward specific social goals. According to Ronald Day, "As an organized system of techniques and technologies, documentation was understood as a player in the historical development of global organization in modernity – indeed, a major player inasmuch as that organization was dependent on the organization and transmission of information."[20] Otlet and Lafontaine (who won the Nobel Prize in 1913) not only envisioned later technical innovations but also projected a global vision for information and information technologies that speaks directly to postwar visions of a global "information society". Otlet and Lafontaine established numerous organizations dedicated to standardization, bibliography, international associations, and consequently, international cooperation. These organizations were fundamental for ensuring international production in commerce, information, communication and modern economic development, and they later found their global form in such institutions as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Otlet designed the Universal Decimal Classification, based on Melville Dewey’s decimal classification system.[21]
Although he lived decades before computers and networks emerged, what he discussed prefigured what ultimately became the World Wide Web. His vision of a great network of knowledge focused on documents and included the notions of hyperlinks, search engines, remote access, and social networks.
Otlet not only imagined that all the world's knowledge should be interlinked and made available remotely to anyone, but he also proceeded to build a structured document collection. This collection involved standardized paper sheets and cards filed in custom-designed cabinets according to a hierarchical index (which culled information worldwide from diverse sources) and a commercial information retrieval service (which answered written requests by copying relevant information from index cards). Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search.[21] By 1937 documentation had formally been institutionalized, as evidenced by the founding of the American Documentation Institute (ADI), later called the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
Transition to modern information science
Vannevar Bush, a famous information scientist, ca. 1940–1944
With the 1950s came increasing awareness of the potential of automatic devices for literature searching and information storage and retrieval. As these concepts grew in magnitude and potential, so did the variety of information science interests. By the 1960s and 70s, there was a move from batch processing to online modes, from mainframe to mini and microcomputers. Additionally, traditional boundaries among disciplines began to fade and many information science scholars joined with library programs. They further made themselves multidisciplinary by incorporating disciplines in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as other professional programs, such as law and medicine in their curriculum. By the 1980s, large databases, such as Grateful Med at the National Library of Medicine, and user-oriented services such as Dialog and Compuserve, were for the first time accessible by individuals from their personal computers. The 1980s also saw the emergence of numerous special interest groups to respond to the changes. By the end of the decade, special interest groups were available involving non-print media, social sciences, energy and the environment, and community information systems. Today, information science largely examines technical bases, social consequences, and theoretical understanding of online databases, widespread use of databases in government, industry, and education, and the development of the Internet and World Wide Web.[22]
Information Dissemination in the 21st Century
Changing Definition
Dissemination has historically been interpreted as unilateral communication of information. With the advent of the internet, and the explosion in popularity of online communities, "social media has changed the information landscape in many respects, and creates both new modes of communication and new types of information",[23] changing the interpretation of the definition of dissemination. The nature of social networks allows for faster diffusion of information than through organizational sources.[24] The internet has changed the way we view, use, create, and store information, now it is time to re-evaluate the way we share and spread it.
Impact of Social Media on People and Industry
Social media networks provide an open information environment for the mass of people who have limited time or access to traditional outlets of information diffusion,[24] this is an "increasingly mobile and social world [that] demands...new types of information skills".[23] Social media integration as an access point is a very useful and mutually beneficial tool for users and providers. All major news providers have visibility and an access point through networks such as Facebook and Twitter maximizing their breadth of audience. Through social media people are directed to, or provided with, information by people they know. The ability to "share, like, and comment on...content"[25] increases the reach farther and wider than traditional methods. People like to interact with information, they enjoy including the people they know in their circle of knowledge. Sharing through social media has become so influential that publishers must "play nice" if they desire to succeed. Although, it is often mutually beneficial for publishers and Facebook to "share, promote and uncover new content"[25] to improve both user base experiences. The impact of popular opinion can spread in unimaginable ways. Social media allows interaction through simple to learn and access tools; The Wall Street Journal offers an app through Facebook, and The Washington Post goes a step further and offers an independent social app that was downloaded by 19.5 million users in 6 months,[25] proving how interested people are in the new way of being provided information.
Social Media's Power to Facilitate Topics
The connections and networks sustained through social media help information providers learn what is important to people. The connections people have throughout the world enable the exchange of information at an unprecedented rate. It is for this reason that these networks have been realized for the potential they provide. "Most news media monitor Twitter for breaking news",[24] as well as news anchors frequently request the audience to tweet pictures of events.[25] The users and viewers of the shared information have earned "opinion-making and agenda-setting power"[24] This channel has been recognized for the usefulness of providing targeted information based on public demand.
Research vectors and applications
The following areas are some of those that information science investigates and develops.
Information access
Information access is an area of research at the intersection of Informatics, Information Science, Information Security, Language Technology, Computer Science, and Library Science. The objectives of information access research are to automate the processing of large and unwieldy amounts of information and to simplify users' access to it. Applicable technologies include information retrieval, text mining, machine translation, and text categorisation. In discussion, information access is often defined as concerning the insurance of free and closed access to information and is brought up in discussions on copyright, patent law, and public domain.
Information architecture
Main article: Information architecture
Information architecture (IA) is the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.[26] It is an emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing together principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.[27] Typically it involves a model or concept of information which is used and applied to activities that require explicit details of complex information systems. These activities include library systems and database development.
Information management
Main article: Information management
Information management (IM) is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information. Management means the organization of and control over the structure, processing and delivery of information. Throughout the 1970s this was largely limited to files, file maintenance, and the life cycle management of paper-based files, other media and records. With the proliferation of information technology starting in the 1970s, the job of information management took on a new light and also began to include the field of data maintenance.
Information retrieval
Main article: Information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web. Automated information retrieval systems are used to reduce what has been called "information overload". Many universities and public libraries use IR systems to provide access to books, journals and other documents. Web search engines are the most visible IR applications.
An information retrieval process begins when a user enters a query into the system. Queries are formal statements of information needs, for example search strings in web search engines. In information retrieval a query does not uniquely identify a single object in the collection. Instead, several objects may match the query, perhaps with different degrees of relevancy.
An object is an entity that is represented by information in a database. User queries are matched against the database information. Depending on the application the data objects may be, for example, text documents, images,[28] audio,[29] mind maps[30] or videos. Often the documents themselves are not kept or stored directly in the IR system, but are instead represented in the system by document surrogates or metadata.
Most IR systems compute a numeric score on how well each object in the database match the query, and rank the objects according to this value. The top ranking objects are then shown to the user. The process may then be iterated if the user wishes to refine the query.[31]
Information seeking
Main article: Information seeking
Information seeking is the process or activity of attempting to obtain information in both human and technological contexts. Information seeking is related to, but different from, information retrieval (IR).
Much library and information science (LIS) research has focused on the information-seeking practices of practitioners within various fields of professional work. Studies have been carried out into the information-seeking behaviors of librarians,[32] academics,[33] medical professionals,[34] engineers[35] and lawyers[36] (among others). Much of this research has drawn on the work done by Leckie, Pettigrew (now Fisher) and Sylvain, who in 1996 conducted an extensive review of the LIS literature (as well as the literature of other academic fields) on professionals' information seeking. The authors proposed an analytic model of professionals' information seeking behaviour, intended to be generalizable across the professions, thus providing a platform for future research in the area. The model was intended to "prompt new insights... and give rise to more refined and applicable theories of information seeking" (1996, p. 188). The model has been adapted by Wilkinson (2001) who proposes a model of the information seeking of lawyers.
Information society
Main article: Information society
An information society is a society where the creation, distribution, diffusion, uses, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The aim of an information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally, through using IT in a creative and productive way. The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart, whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. People who have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes called digital citizens.
Basically, an information society is the means of getting information from one place to another (Wark, 1997, p. 22). As technology has become more advanced over time so too has the way we have adapted in sharing this information with each other.
Information society theory discusses the role of information and information technology in society, the question of which key concepts should be used for characterizing contemporary society, and how to define such concepts. It has become a specific branch of contemporary sociology.
Knowledge representation and reasoning
Knowledge representation (KR) is an area of artificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitate inferencing from those knowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge. The KR can be made to be independent of the underlying knowledge model or knowledge base system (KBS) such as a semantic network.[37]
Knowledge Representation (KR) research involves analysis of how to reason accurately and effectively and how best to use a set of symbols to represent a set of facts within a knowledge domain. A symbol vocabulary and a system of logic are combined to enable inferences about elements in the KR to create new KR sentences. Logic is used to supply formal semantics of how reasoning functions should be applied to the symbols in the KR system. Logic is also used to define how operators can process and reshape the knowledge. Examples of operators and operations include, negation, conjunction, adverbs, adjectives, quantifiers and modal operators. The logic is interpretation theory. These elements—symbols, operators, and interpretation theory—are what give sequences of symbols meaning within a KR.
See also
Information science portal
University portal
• Outline of information science
• Outline of information technology
• Outline of library science
References
1. Stock, W.G., & Stock, M. (2013). Handbook of Information Science. Berlin, Boston, MA: De Gruyter Saur.
2. "Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems: Technological Determinism". Principia Cibernetica Web. Retrieved 2011-11-28.
3. Borko, H. (1968). Information science: What is it? American Documentation, 19(1), 3¬5.
4. Mikhailov, A.I., Chernyl, A.I., and Gilyarevskii, R.S. (1966) "Informatika – novoe nazvanie teorii naučnoj informacii." Naučno tehničeskaja informacija, 12, pp. 35–39.
5. Luciano Floridi, "What is the Philosophy of Information?", Metaphilosophy, 2002, (33), 1/2.
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THE INVISIBLE SUBSTRATE OF INFORMATION SCIENCE
by Marcia J. Bates
Dept. of Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
mjbates@ucla.edu
Copyright © 1999
by John Wiley and Sons
Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, #12 (1999) 1043-1050.
Abstract
The explicit, above-the-water-line paradigm of information science is well known and widely discussed. Every disciplinary paradigm, however, contains elements that are less conscious and explicit in the thinking of its practitioners. The purpose of this article is to elucidate key elements of the below-the-water-line portion of the information science paradigm.
Particular emphasis is given to information science’s role as a meta-science--conducting research and developing theory around the documentary products of other disciplines and activities. The mental activities of the professional practice of the field are seen to center around representation and organization of information rather than knowing information. It is argued that such representation engages fundamentally different talents and skills from those required in other professions and intellectual disciplines. Methodological approaches and values of information science are also considered.
Introduction
Recently, digital information and new forms of information technology have become the focus of tremendous amounts of attention and energy in our society. Money is pouring into the development of all manner of technologies and information systems. The excitement penetrates not only the business world and the general society, but also academia, where computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and social scientists are thinking about information and the social impacts of information technology in new ways.
This new context poses a challenge to information science. Currently, the wheel is being reinvented every day on the information superhighway. Our expertise is ignored while newcomers to information questions stumble through tens of millions of dollars of research and startup money to rediscover what information science knew in 1960. We in the field need to make our research and theory better known and more understandable to the newcomers flooding in--or be washed away in the flood.
To do that effectively, however, we need to become more fully conscious of the research and practice paradigm from which we operate. A field’s paradigm, in Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) sense, consists of the core body of theory and methodology of a field, along with an associated world view regarding the phenomena of interest to the field. In the sciences there is generally an organizing theoretical model of great scope, which generates research questions for decades. (As Kuhn described for the field of physics, first, Newton’s Laws, then Einstein’s theory of relativity were successive defining theoretical models for that field.)
As will be noted shortly, the explicit paradigm of information science has been very well described before. However, a field’s paradigm is much more than the explicit theoretical model it works from. Certain methodological approaches and a world view are generally integrally linked with the questions studied. A field tends to draw people with certain cognitive styles, who produce research of a certain character. The field has a history, great names, stories, customs, mores, and values. One does not work long in information science without knowing the names Wilf Lancaster, Gerard Salton, and Llewellyn C. Puppybreath III, and what they are known for.
Much of the paradigm of any field lurks below the water line, largely unconscious and unarticulated, even by its practitioners. Researchers often soak up the paradigm, understanding the subject matter and what it means in every way to be, say, a physicist or engineer, without being able to articulate it well.
Today, in information science, many newcomers without a background in the field are coming in. At this historical juncture, information scientists need to become more conscious of the thought-world we are operating out of, so that we can communicate it more rapidly and effectively to large numbers of new people, and so that we can continue to influence the future of information in the twenty-first century.
The purpose of this article is to attempt to articulate at least some of those parts of our field that are largely unarticulated ordinarily--to describe the invisible substrate of information science, the part of the field that is below the water line.
Paradigm Above the Water Line
Information science does have an explicit, above-the-water-line, paradigmatic definition, and an understanding of that explicit expression is important to an understanding of the intrinsic unity of the whole paradigm. Information science is the study of the gathering, organizing, storing, retrieving, and dissemination of information. That definition has been quite stable and unvarying over at least the last 30 years. In fact, in a January 1968 article in this journal, Harold Borko wrote the following:
Information science is that discipline that investigates the properties and behavior of information, the forces governing the flow of information, and the means of processing information for optimum accessibility and usability. It is concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information.
It has both a pure science component, which inquires into the subject without regard to its application, and an applied science component, which develops services and products (Borko, 1968, p. 3).
Paradigm Below the Water Line
The Meta-Field of Information Science. It is first of all important to recognize that information science, like education and journalism, among others, is a field that cuts across, or is orthogonal to, the conventional academic disciplines. All three of the above-named fields deal with distinct parts of the transmission of human knowledge--information science with the storage and retrieval of it in recorded form, education with the teaching and learning of it, and journalism with the discovery and transmission of news. Under these circumstances, such fields cut across all of what we might call "content" disciplines. Art historians focus on the study of art; information scientists, on the other hand, take art information as but one slice of the full range of information content with which we deal. Likewise, art education is but one part of education, etc.
Paisley has made a similar distinction by contrasting behavioral science "level-fields" and "variable-fields." He defined the former as disciplines that study human behavior at different levels of organization—psychology at the individual level, sociology at the group level, and anthropology at the culture level (Paisley, 1972, p. i). Paisley states that variable-fields, on the other hand, look at one variable across all the conventional levels. For example, political science looks at political behavior across the several levels.
Here, however, the distinction being made is between conventional disciplines and meta-disciplines. The meta-disciplines are distinguished by the fact that they are interested in the subject matter of all the conventional disciplines, they do something with that subject matter that is of value for society (see next paragraph), and that something is unique to each meta-discipline. (Though they are research disciplines, the three examples of information science, education, and communication/journalism also have distinct professional cores, which are vital to their natures.)
Information science organizes that subject content for retrieval, education uses teaching skills to convey that knowledge to learners, journalism uses reporting and writing skills to convey news events to others, etc. In each case, it is not a variable that is being studied, but rather the content of all the conventional disciplines is being shaped and molded for a societal objective through different types of professional activities involving the manipulation and transmission of knowledge.
Research in these various meta-fields analyzes the processes and domains associated with the professional activities being carried out in each case. Information seeking and searching, teaching and learning, and communication are (some of) the processes being studied in the research of the three example fields of information science, education, and communication research/journalism. These processes are identifiable in human interactions with virtually all kinds of knowledge or information, and contain many research-worthy questions.
Though each field covers all kinds of knowledge or information, each nonetheless has particular domains it studies, which cut across all the conventional subject disciplines. These domains are distinguished not by their subject content, which can be highly various, but rather by their rhetorical character in the broadest sense, that is, by their selection, design, and objectives. The domain of information science is the universe of recorded information that is selected and retained for later access; the domain of education is curricula; and the domain of journalism is the journalistic product of all the newsworthy areas of life (science reporting, political reporting, etc.).
Note that in each case, the intellectual product of research or of social or cultural activities is selected, designed and shaped for some social purpose. Different talents, training, and experience are required to select and index documents (information science), to select and organize information in a curriculum to optimize learning (teaching), or to sleuth for information and shape a news story (journalism).
What then, is the nature of that shaping for a purpose in information science, particularly? This can most readily be understood by looking first at the practice of the field. After that, research and theory of information science will be examined in this perspective as well.
The Content of Form. In applied information science, we find ourselves primarily concerned with the form and organization of information, its underlying structure, and only secondarily with its content. In the sciences and humanities, it is the content that is of dominating concern. In fact, the organization of the information they are using is usually virtually or entirely invisible to the practitioners of those disciplines; they have simply never thought of it, never realized that extensive and intellectually demanding work is needed to develop index and database standards, to select and catalog resources, etc.
Most people outside our field do not realize that there is a content to the study of form and organization. I believe that this is one of the chief reasons our field is commonly thought to have no "there" there. The average person, whether Ph.D. scholar or high school graduate, never notices the structure that organizes their information, because they are so caught up in absorbing and relating to the content. And, in fairness to them, they are not interested in the structure. We are interested in the structure.
As a practical matter, when one does the work to gather, store, organize, retrieve, and disseminate information--the classic elements of the formal, above-the-water-line paradigm definition of information science--one necessarily gets involved with understanding and manipulating its form, structure, and organization. One’s attention is drawn, again and again, to these features of the information, simply in order to get the job done.
People who come into this field, whether formally educated in it or who drift in through a job, sooner or later go through a transformation, wherein they shift their primary focus of attention from the information content to the information form, organization, and structure. The Ph.D. art historian who gets a job working with art history information out of a love of the subject matter, eventually finds him or herself working with the core questions of information science, not of art history.
Being and Representing. The transformation involves even more than a shift in the subject content of one’s actions or thoughts, however. Work in the meta-discipline of information science, both at the practical and theoretical levels, draws upon different cognitive talents than most of the work within conventional subject disciplines.
Perhaps the best parallel for illustrating the difference in the mental processing of information scientists and conventional disciplinary practitioners is to use an analogy of the relationship between actors and physicians. We take it for granted that when we see a film or television program like "ER" ("Emergency Room"), that it is actors who portray the physicians, because that is the way it has always been done.
On reflection, however, is it not strange that the people who have the most experience and knowledge about being doctors--the doctors themselves--are not the ones who portray doctors in drama? Why not? Why do not the competitive demands of the television marketplace pressure the heads of networks to hire real physicians--the true experts, after all--to portray physicians in a medical drama?
The answer here is that while the physicians know the most about medicine, portraying a physician is different from being a physician. Portraying a physician requires a different body of talents than being a physician does. Occasionally, some people have both types of talent, but usually not. Actors, with little or no medical knowledge, but with experience portraying a variety of characters, do a better job at portraying physicians than even physicians themselves do. Is that not remarkable, when we reflect on it?
In like manner, representing information--whether you are indexing or formulating a search strategy or helping someone articulate what they want to find--is different from knowing the information. After all, the physicians know much more about hospitals, medicine, and treating patients. They know so much, it is in their bones, a part of their every action. Yet when called upon to portray a medical situation instead of simply live it, physicians generally make poor actors. A talented actor, without a day’s experience in medical school, can do a much better job.
Above, it was said that the rhetorical character of each of the domains of information science, education, and journalism differed from each other and from the conventional disciplines. For information science, a particular kind of representation is at the heart of the rhetorical stance of the field toward its domain, the universe of recorded information. (Here it is left to the other two fields to define their rhetorical stances.) Creating databases and catalogs involves creating representations of forms of information. The skill a reference librarian or information specialist develops also involves representation—figuring out how to conceptualize and represent a user’s query, then in turn translating the query (representing it) into a form an information system uses, which in turn arises from the representations of documents in the information system.
Subject Expertise. A perennial issue in the information field revolves around how much subject knowledge an information specialist needs. Surely, it is said, one must be an expert in molecular biology to be a good information specialist at a biotechnology firm. I am among the many, however, who contest this assumption. I would argue that what one mainly needs is information expertise and talent, not content expertise. The latter is a nice bonus, if it is present, but is not essential.
When taking on a new part, actors sometimes research the context or the role they will play. Such research can enable them to do a better job of acting, but researching hospital life or medicine does not entail getting a medical degree! Actors, in fact, may be looking at entirely different things when they research the role than would ever occur to a doctor living that life. The actor needs different knowledge and different talents to do a good job at portraying physicians. This author was once told by a manager at the National Library of Medicine that some years earlier they had tried using physicians to index the Index Medicus database, but had given it up, because the physicians did not do as good a job as trained indexers did.
When an information specialist takes a position at a biotechnology firm, it would be a good idea to read some popular books about molecular biology, learn who the dominant individuals are and what the major research issues and approaches are. But what will be most important for the information specialist will be to use information-related talents. People who are attracted to this field generally have somewhere within them, wide subject interests, good skills with language, with getting the big picture about a subject matter, and a knack for operating at the level of representation of the subject matter, rather than just working in the subject matter.
Over many years of teaching, I have observed that master’s students in information science programs complete the mental transformation to thinking like information specialists within a few months. Often they have considerable difficulties during the first few weeks of the program, because at first it feels alien to think about a resource in terms of the features that matter to the organization and retrieval of it, rather than in terms of mastering its content. In a job, without formal information training, this transformation process may take longer.
It is argued here, however, that unless that transformation occurs, one cannot do a fully effective job as an information professional. And this claim is made unequivocally. If you want to portray a doctor, you have to be a good actor, not a doctor; if you want to work with information organization and retrieval, you have to be a good information person, not a subject specialist without information training. All the subject expertise in the world is not enough, if you do not possess the mental framework and skills in information work.
If drama and acting were being invented today, instead of deep in the mists of history, people might well be making the primitive assumption today that doctors must play doctors in drama. The beginning assumption would be that to produce good acting, we must use people who are in exactly the same situation found in the play--only pregnant women can portray pregnant women, only physicians play physicians, etc. However, humankind long ago learned that actors, not specialists in the circumstances of the story, are best at acting.
Description of information and retrieval from large bodies of information are quite recent phenomena, however. Collections did not become large enough to require extensive and systematic organizational approaches until the nineteenth century. Information expertise developed within the library, and later the documentation, fields over many decades, but the numbers of people pursuing these activities were still very small, however, and marginal to the larger society.
Now at the end of the twentieth century, however, the society at large is discovering information and problems of information description and organization. Members of the broader society are consistently committing what we might call the First Fallacy of Information Work; they are thinking that organizing information requires deep subject expertise and no information expertise. In just the last couple of years I have heard of three very well funded projects of this sort. In one, dozens of historians, exclusively, untrained in cataloging, were hired to catalog historical material, with consequent enormous waste of time and resources as they fumbled their way, finally, to creating a usable indexing vocabulary. In two other projects, educators, also untrained in information work, were enlisted to index educational materials without any guidance from anyone with the least background in information work. In my view, doing this is analogous to hiring physicians to portray physicians in the theater. The sooner society moves beyond this misapprehension of the nature of information work, the better for all.
(Sometimes highly gifted people come into the information field with no training and do well. Likewise some actors are so naturally talented that training and experience are virtually unneeded for them. But most people in both fields benefit substantially from training and experience.)
My litmus test for the newcomers who are now interested in information work, is whether I can observe evidence that they have gone through the transformation of becoming an information expert. That perspective is the lens through which information scientists see their world--both at the theoretical and practical levels. It is the single most defining framework element for their world view. There are many other elements to the part of information science that is below the water line, that will be addressed shortly--but this is the single most important, in my view. It is what the newcomer or outsider does not understand; it is what the insider takes for granted (and therefore seldom notices or articulates). This perspective drenches the thought and actions of the information person.
Librarianship and Information Science. Both people who call themselves librarians, and people who call themselves information scientists share this information perspective. Other fields with which information science might have been thought originally to have much in common, such as computer science, cognitive science, computational linguistics, or artificial intelligence, did not, in fact, prove to be good matches. Both librarianship and practical information science, however, have the information perspective in common, and the phrase "library and information science," or "LIS" has become very common. I believe that this coming together arose out of deep commonalities in the way of thinking and doing necessary to achieve information work objectives. While librarianship and information science have very different histories, and, in particular, different methodological and values perspectives, they have in common this core relationship to the material of their work.
Information Science Theory. The distinctive perspective discussed above in information work carries over into and is integral to the theory of the information science field as well. In 1970, this journal changed its name from American Documentation to the current one. That year is as good as any to mark the formal recognition of the then-new field. The roots of information science lay in the theory and thinking in several related fields, particularly in the years 1930-1970. What those disparate theories and elements had in common, what enabled them to be a reasonably coherent intellectual discipline when brought together in information science, was their interest in form and structure, in particular, in information form and structure.
General systems theory (Bertalanffy, 1968; also see historical discussion in Checkland, 1981), which developed in the 1930’s and later, drew attention to the underlying structure or pattern in social and technical institutions and devices. Once the concept of the system was developed and elaborated, systems could be recognized as underlying countless disparate social, technical, and physical phenomena. Operations research and systems analysis during and after World War II developed these ideas further into a variety of applied realms.
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (1967) developed game theory--which is a way of seeing an underlying common structure of trade-offs, benefits, and disadvantages within a variety of social and economic situations. Perhaps the best-known game is "Prisoner’s Dilemma." In this situation, the prosecution’s evidence on a burglary charge against two thieves is weak. The prosecutor interrogates each man separately. Each is told that if he confesses and his friend does not, he will receive a light sentence, and that if he does not confess and his companion implicates him, he will receive a very heavy sentence. If both confess, they will receive a middling sentence, and if neither confesses they will both get a smaller charge of carrying a concealed weapon (Jones, 1980, p. 77-78). This game structure is so robust that it underlies countless cops and robbers programs on television, as the television writers imaginatively play out one variation or another of it.
This recognition of underlying structures arose throughout the social and engineering sciences in the decades after the War. If we define information as "the pattern of organization of matter and energy" (Parker, 1974, p. 10), then structure of all kinds itself constitutes a kind of information.
Within that context, Norbert Wiener (1961) identified the role of information in natural and human systems in a way that had never been recognized before. He developed the field of cybernetics, which deals with the guiding or governing of systems. Wiener demonstrated that many systems are driven not primarily or only by mechanical forces, but rather are determined by the feedback of information to a governing element of the system. We are so used to hearing the word "feedback" in its common everyday overuse, that the iconoclastic newness of Wiener’s ideas has been lost nowadays. Wiener demonstrated, for example, that when a person reaches for an object, it is done with continual visual and kinesthetic feedback of information, which is then used to guide the hand further. The hand does not just respond to a single impulse from the brain to "grab."
The early work that had perhaps the single most electrifying impact of all was Claude Shannon’s information theory (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). Shannon measured the amount of information going through a telephone wire. Such a development does not on the face of it sound revolutionary, but it was, because his theory was abstract, and seemingly applicable to many environments, including not only the technical but also human language and psychology. The limits of Shannon’s theory for the human sciences ultimately became evident, but the legacy of a new, abstract sense of information as reducing uncertainty by measurable amounts, remained.
Similarly, Noam Chomsky’s theory of syntactic structures in language (1971)--common patterns underlying all different languages--had an explosive impact on several fields, and was the engine that drove the field of psycholinguistics. (In my 1980 study of citations in information science, Chomsky was the single most cited individual. Bates, 1980, p. 278. ) Miller, Galanter and Pribram, three well-known psychologists, wrote Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), which posited a common underlying structure to all, or virtually all, human behaviors.
Gregory Bateson identified common underlying structures in learning, as well as metastructures in communication that reference other communications. He dealt, thus, in many different ways with representations of representations. It is no accident that the cover of the 1972 paperback of his Steps to An Ecology of Mind states: "The new information sciences can lead to a new understanding of man." (Bateson, 1972). He is best known for his "double bind" theory of schizophrenia, but his theories referred to all communication and learning among humans, not just schizophrenia. When biochemical explanations of schizophrenia largely displaced psychological ones, Bateson’s work fell into disrepute--a most unfortunate failure of our intellectual world to recognize that he was a theorist of all communication, not just the unhealthy communications that are sometimes associated with dysfunctional families.
Finally, the recognition of form and structure found the purest expression of all in G. Spencer-Brown‘s Laws of Form (1972). which analyzed the mathematical rudiments, the absolute essence, of form. Spencer-Brown started with the irreducibly smallest distinction, a single difference, which is the first step in creating form out of the formless void.
All of these thinkers had in common the recognition of underlying structure beneath the surface variety of life. They contributed theories and ideas of great power, and were the theoretical driving force behind information science. Thus, when the theory and practice of information science are described in the way they have been so far in this article, the close relationship between theory and practice--through their common attention to form and structure, becomes evident.
Information Science’s Universe. So both from a theoretical and a practical standpoint, information scientists are interested in the structure of their object of study--information. But as the examples above indicate, many social and behavioral scientists are interested in underlying structures too. Many engineers, based on Shannon’s and Wiener’s work, among others, are interested in information. What, then, is distinctive about information science’s theory?
We are interested in information as a social and psychological phenomenon. The information we study generally originates from human agency in some way, whether it is the data beamed down from a satellite or the text of a book on Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Our primary, but not sole focus, is on recorded information and people’s relationship to it.
All the academic disciplines can be seen as studying different universes of phenomena. The natural sciences study the natural world, the social sciences study the social worlds produced by humans, and the arts and humanities study the content and context of the creative works of human beings, from philosophy to literature to the arts.
Information science has a distinct universe that it studies too--the world of recorded information produced by human agency. We can imagine all the human activities in studying the above natural, social and artistic universes themselves producing information entities--books, articles, databases, data files, etc.--thus creating a fourth universe, that of recorded information.
The recorded information universe contains many other kinds of information besides research results—popular literature, business records, personal archives, music, film, etc., and, of course, all of these in electronic form as well. In short, the documentary products of human activity themselves form a universe deserving of study, and study of that universe—and how human beings produce it, seek it, retrieve it, and use it--is the intellectual domain of information science.
I argued in an earlier paper (Bates, 1987) that one of the primary concerns of our field should therefore be to define the parameters and variables associated with our universe--information produced by human agency. We have been slow to do that, however, and still tend to borrow the variables used in the other social sciences, rather than develop those unique to our field.
This study of the information universe finds its purest expression in bibliometrics, or the study of the statistical properties of recorded information. However, the field’s interest is in human-produced information, and therefore how human beings relate to this information--how they seek it, use it, ignore it, retrieve it--is of central research importance also.
In comparison to other social and behavioral science fields, we are always looking for the red thread of information in the social texture of people’s lives. When we study people we do so with the purpose of understanding information creation, seeking, and use. We do not just study people in general. The rest of the social sciences do various forms of that. Sometimes this can be a very fine distinction; other times it is very easy to see. In communications research, a cousin to our field, the emphasis is on the communication process and its effects on people; in information science we study that process in service of information transfer.
For another example, there are social scientists today who are observing people doing collaborative work through new types of networked systems in the field of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) . The sociologist or social psychologist identifies and describes the network of relationships and the social hierarchy that develops under these circumstances. They may examine the impact of technology on those social relationships and on the work of the individuals involved.
The information scientist, on the other hand, follows the information the way Woodward and Bernstein "followed the money" in their Watergate investigations. That’s the red thread in the social tapestry. When we look at that social hierarchy, we are not interested in the hierarchy per se, but, rather, we ask how it impedes or promotes the transfer of information. We ask what kinds of information people prefer to communicate through this or that new channel of information technology. We always follow the information.
Information Science’s Big Questions. Three Big Questions can be identified within the above framework:
1) The physical question: What are the features and laws of the recorded-information universe?
2) The social question: How do people relate to, seek, and use information?
3) The design question: How can access to recorded information be made most rapid and effective?
The second question above deals with all kinds of information, but the other two have "recorded information" at their heart. We need to understand how people relate to and use all kinds of information, and in their social contexts--the second question--in order to contribute to our understanding of the first question and in order to do the best job possible answering the third question. But one of the defining characteristics of our field--and another feature that unites us with librarianship--is that we deal principally with recorded information.
There’s a reason for that--it is not just an historical happenstance. A fundamental difference between recorded information and more evanescent or ephemeral forms is that recorded information generally lasts a long time. It can hang around for months, years, or centuries. And that in turn means that it can pile up. One of the fundamental challenges for both librarianship and information science is to find a way to contend with ever-larger piles or stacks or sets of information.
Because of the linguistic, psychological, cognitive, social, and technical complexities of information retrieval, each increase in size of the information source or database requires different solutions; scalability is a fundamental problem in this field. I believe that at some point a historian will show that the information explosion (with us since the invention of printing) has driven most of the major innovations in information organization and access. Each time the average collection grew to a new level, a new access method had to be devised. This has been particularly noticeable in the last century--from the development of subject headings to the development of hyperlinks.
The development of each new medium or technological device also requires a sophisticated blend of our technological and socio-psychological understanding to produce the best information retrieval system result. Each new thing we learn about the universe of information can be used in answering the design question also. Thus, while these three questions are posed as distinct questions, it can be seen that the research in response to each of them is also mutually supportive and valuable for answering the other questions.
Methodological Substrate. Let us turn now to the other elements of the substrate of our field. The fundamental methodological stance of information science can be described as socio-technical. The two most important methodological traditions we draw on are the social sciences and the engineering sciences. Some individuals in the field are more interested in, and more capable in, either the social or the technical side of this equation. But to function effectively in information science, one must be at least comfortable with both sides of this dual tradition. Thus, only those computer scientists endure in the field who do not dismiss the linguistic or psychological complexities of information retrieval as squishy nonsense, and only those social scientists survive who are interested in the technology and do not hand it an unreflective Luddite rejection.
Consequently, information science tends to draw multi-talented people, people who enjoy the mixture of kinds of cognition that the nature of our field requires to solve its research problems. This is one of the reasons we have failed to coalesce as a field around one standard methodological paradigm. For one thing, we need this methodological variety to solve these problems, and for another thing, the people in our field, by our multi-talented natures, enjoy and tolerate that variety much better than is the case in other fields. If a field can solve its research problems with a smaller range of cognitive and methodological approaches, it can then attract and maintain its activities using people who are more single-minded, or single-talented—but that is not the case in information science.
Methodologically, we may use bibliometric techniques, other statistical techniques, and philosophico-analytic approaches for studying the first question. Much qualitative research remains to be done analyzing the social significance of the design characteristics of various documentary forms (Hjørland, 1997, p. 127). The second question draws on the full range of social science techniques, from the quantitative to the qualitative. The third, design question draws on the above two approaches as well, but most distinctively uses engineering techniques. A fundamental approach in information retrieval system design is formative evaluation. First, a system is developed that embodies solutions to information retrieval for a designated context. That system is then tested for performance, which produces learning that is practical and immediate as well as more fundamental. These discoveries are then applied to a new design, and performance proceeds to improve. It can thus be seen that to solve the information science field’s problems, a mix of methodologies are needed.
A final comment on methodology: Regarding the great methodological shift sweeping through the social sciences, the shift to the qualitative, multiple-perspective, post-Modernist approaches—these new techniques simply add to and enrich the armamentarium of techniques available to the information scientist for studying the subject matter of our field. For reasons that have already been argued, this field requires multiple methodological approaches to conduct its research. In mid-twentieth century social science we have had a series of waves of methodological fashion--each wave declaring the prior approach to be hopelessly bankrupt and inadequate. It is to be hoped that it is finally recognized that all of these methodological approaches can be powerful and useful--especially in information science.
Values. The values of information science have tended to follow the "value neutral" science or engineering model. The emphasis at the applied level is on getting the job done well--the engineering approach--without political or explicitly value-laden objectives. At the pure science level, the effort is to find out the truth (or multiple truths) of the matter studied, regardless of personal agenda. The advantage of removing political issues from scientific endeavors has been that communication in information science (as with other sciences) has been able to proceed across political boundaries and among people with very different political philosophies.
Librarianship, in contrast, follows a more service-oriented and empowerment-oriented value system. The library is there to produce a certain desirable social result, and, as a consequence, many of the activities of the library field are organized and directed to meet that values-laden goal. The mix of values driving library work varies from country to country, and, appropriately, is suited to the particular circumstances of each nation.
There is one more characteristic--we might even call it a value--of the field of information science that merits recognition: a sense of humor. As another article in this issue documents, the American Society for Information Science has long had a Special Interest Group devoted to presenting spoofs of papers (SIG-CON), and idolizing its founding member and "information racketeer," the never-seen Llewellyn C. Puppybreath III. I took this element of our field for granted until I visited one year a social science academic association (which shall remain nameless), and came upon a most deadly serious group of people whose sense of humor was well hidden and whose anxiety at each paper presentation was palpable. I was happy to return to a group of people able to laugh at themselves, yet still value deeply their own work.
Conclusions
Information science does not consist only of the explicit paradigm of the study of the selecting, gathering, organizing, accessing and retrieving of information that is the usual description of the field. As with most intellectual domains, the field of information science has many unarticulated, but important, elements "below the water line."
It has been the purpose of this article to bring some of those elements to the surface, so that we may better understand our own work and communicate it to the many people from the broader society who are now excited by information questions and problems.
References
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