Information Science
2005
Tefko Saracevic, PhD
School of Communication, Information and
Library Studies
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey USA
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko
© Tefko Saracevic
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Organization of presentation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Big picture – problems, solutions, social place
Structure – main areas in research & practice
Technology – information retrieval – largest part
Information – representation; bibliometrics
People – users, use, seeking, context
Paradigm split – distancing of areas
Digital libraries – whose are they anyhow?
Conclusions – big questions for the future
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Part 1. The big picture
Problems addressed
α Bit of history: Vannevar Bush
(1945):
β Defined problem as “... the massive
task of making more accessible of a
bewildering store of knowledge.”
β Problem still with us & growing
Table of content
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… solution
α Bush suggested a machine:
“Memex ... association of ideas ...
duplicate mental processes
artificially.”
α Technological fix to problem
α Still with us:
technological determinant
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At the base of information
science:
Problem
Trying to control content in
α Information explosion
β exponential growth of information
artifacts, if not of information itself
PLUS today
α Communication explosion
β exponential growth of means and ways by
which information is communicated,
transmitted, accesses, used
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technological solution, BUT …
applying technology
to solving
problems of
effective use of
information
BUT:
from a
HUMAN & SOCIAL
and not only
TECHNOLOGICAL
perspective
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or a symbolic model
People
Information
Technology
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Problems & solutions:
SOCIAL CONTEXT
α Professional practice AND scientific
inquiry related to:
Effective communication of knowledge
records - ‘literature’ - among humans in
the context of social, organizational, &
individual need for and use of
information
α Taking advantage of modern
information technology
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General characteristics
α Interdisciplinarity - relations
with a number of fields, some more
or less predominant
α Technological imperative - driving
force, as in many modern fields
α Information society - social
context and role in evolution shared with many fields
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Part 2. Structure
Composition of the field
α As many fields, information science
has different areas of
concentration & specialization
α They change, evolve over time
β grow closer, grow apart
β ignore each other, less or more
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most importantly different areas…
α receive more or less in funding &
emphasis
β producing great imbalances in work &
progress
β attracting different audiences & fields
α this includes
β vastly different levels of support for
research and
β huge commercial investments &
applications
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How to view structure?
by decomposing areas & efforts in
research & practice emphasizing
Technology
or
Informatio
n
© Tefko Saracevic
People
or
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Part 3.
Technology
α Identified with information
retrieval (IR)
β by far biggest effort and investment
β international & global
β commercial interest large & growing
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Information Retrieval –
definition & objective
“ IR: ... intellectual aspects of
description of information, ... search,
... & systems, machines...”
Calvin Mooers, 1951
α How to provide users with relevant
information effectively?
For that objective:
1. How to organize information
intellectually?
2. How to specify the search &
interaction intellectually?
3. What techniques & systems to use
effectively?
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Contemporary IR research
α Now mostly done within computer
science
β e.g Special Interest Group on IR,
Association for Computing Machinery
(SIGIR,ACM)
α Spread globally
β e.g. major IR research communities
emerged in China, Korea, Singapore
α Branched outside of information
science - “everybody does information retrieval”
β data mining, machine learning, natural
language processing, artificial
intelligence, computer graphics …
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Text REtrieval Conference (TREC)
α Major research, laboratory effort
α Started in 1992, now probably ending
β “support research within the IR community by
providing the infrastructure necessary for largescale evaluation”
α Methods
β provides large test beds, queries, relevance
judgments, comparative analyses
β essentially using Cranfield 1960’s methodology
β organized around tracks
γ various topics – changing over years
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TREC impact
α International – big impact on creating
research communities
α Annual conferences
β reports, exchange results, foster cooperation
α Results
β mostly in reports, available at
http://trec.nist.gov/pubs.html
β overviews provided as well
β but, only a fraction published in journals or
books
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TREC tracks 2004
103 groups from 21 countries
α Genomics with 4 sub
α HARD (High Accuracy
tracks
Retrieval from Documents)
α Novelty
(new, nonredundant
information)
α Question answering
α Robust (improving poorly
performing topics)
α Terabyte
(very large
collections)
α Web track
© Tefko Saracevic
α Previous tracks:
β
β
β
β
β
β
β
β
β
β
β
ad-hoc (1992-1999)
routing (92–97)
interactive (94-02)
filtering (95-02)
cross language (97-02)
speech (97-00)
Spanish (94-96)
video (00-01)
Chinese (96-97)
query (98-00)
and a few more run for
two years only
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Broadening of IR –
ever changing, ever new areas added
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
Cross language IR (CLIR)
Natural language processing (NLP IR)
Music IR (MIR)
Image, video, multimedia retrieval
Spoken language retrieval
IR for bioinformatics and genomics
Summarization; text extraction
Question answering
Many human-computer interactions
XML IR
Web IR; Web search engines
IR in context – big area for major
search engines & newer research
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Commercial IR
α Search engines based on IR
α But added many elaborations &
significant innovations
β dealing with HUGE numbers of pages fast
β countering spamming & page rank games –
adversarial IR - combat of algorithms
β adding context for searching
α Spread & impact worldwide
β about 2000 engines in over 160 countries
β English was dominant, but not any more
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Commercial IR: brave new world
α Large investments & economic sector
β hope for big profits, as yet questionable
α Leading to proprietary, secret IR
β also aggressive hiring of best talent
β new commercial research centers in
different countries (e.g. MS in China)
α Academic research funding is changing
β brain drain from academe
α Commercial search engines facing many
challenges
β view from
© Tefko Saracevic
:Amit Singhal presentation
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IR successfully effected:
α Emergence & growth of the INFORMATION
INDUSTRY
α Evolution of IS as a PROFESSION &
SCIENCE
α Many APPLICATIONS in many fields
β including on the Web – search engines
α Improvements in HUMAN - COMPUTER
INTERACTION
α Evolution of INTEDISCIPLINARITY
IR has a long, proud history
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Part 4.
Information
α Several areas of investigation;
β as basic phenomenon – not much progress
γ measures as Shannon's not successful
γ concentrated on manifestations and effects
γ no recent progress in this basic research
β information representation
γ large area connected with IR, librarianship
γ metadata
β bibliometrics
γ structures of literature
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What is information?
Intuitively well understood, but
formally not well stated
β Several viewpoints, models emerged
α Shannon: source-channel-destination
β signals not content – not really
applicable, despite many tries
α Cognitive: changes in cognitive
structures
β content processing & effects
α Social: context, situation
β information seeking, tasks
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Information in information science:
Three senses
(from narrowest to broadest)
1. Information in terms of decision involving
little or no cognitive processing
β
signals, bits, straightforward data - e.g.. inf.
theory (Shanon), economics,
2. Information involving cognitive processing
& understanding
β
understanding, matching texts, Brookes
3. Information also as related to context,
situation, problem-at-hand
β
USERS, USE,TASK
For information science
(including information retrieval):
third, broadest interpretation necessary
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Part 5.
People
α Professional services
β in organization – moving toward knowledge
management, competitive intelligence
β in industry – vendors, aggregators, Internet,
α Research
β user & use studies
β interaction studies
β broadening to information seeking studies,
social context, collaboration
β relevance studies
β social informatics
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User & use studies
α Oldest area
β covers many topics, methods,
orientations
β many studies related to IR
γ e.g. searching, multitasking, browsing,
navigation
α Branching into Web use studies
β quantitative & qualitative studies
β emergence of webmetrics
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Interaction
α Traditional IR model concentrates
on matching but not on user side &
interaction
α Several interaction models
suggested
γ Ingwersen’s cognitive, Belkin’s episode,
Saracevic’s stratified model
β hard to get experiments & confirmation
α Considered key to providing
γ basis for better design
γ understanding of use of systems
α Web interactions: a major new area
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Information seeking
α Concentrates on broader context not only
IR or interaction, people as they move in
life & work
α Number of models provided
β e.g. Kuhlthau’s stages, Järvelin’s task based
α Includes studies of ‘life in the round,’
making sense, information encountering,
work life, information discovery
α Based on concept of social construction
of information
© Tefko Saracevic
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Paradigm split in
technology - people
Part 6.
α Split from early 80’s to date into:
System-centered
β algorithms, TREC, search engines
β continue traditional IR model
Human-(user)-centered
β cognitive, situational, user studies
β interaction models, some started in
TREC
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Human vs. system
α Human (user) side:
β often highly critical, even one-sided
β mantra of implications for design
β but does not deliver concretely
α System side:
β mostly ignores user side & studies
β ‘tell us what to do & we will’
α Issue NOT
H or
S
approach
β even less H vs. S
β but how can H AND S work together
β major challenge for the future
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Calls vs support
α Many calls for user-centered or humancentered design, approaches & evaluation
α Number of works discussing it, but few
proposing concrete solutions
α But: most support for system work
β in the digital age support is for digital
α Recent attempt at combining two views:
Book: Ingerwersen, P. and Järvelin, K. (2005). The turn:
Integration of information seeking and retrieval in
context. Springer.
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Part 7.
Digital libraries
α LARGE & growing area
α “Hot” area in R&D
β a number of large grants & projects in
the US, European Union, & other
countries
β but “DIGITAL” big & “libraries“ small
α “Hot” area in practice
β building digital collections, hybrid
libraries,
β many projects throughout the world
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Technical problems
α Substantial - larger & more complex
than anticipated:
β representing, storing
library objects
& retrieving of
γ particularly if originally designed to be
printed & then digitized
β operationally managing large collections issues of scale
β dealing with diverse & distributed
collections
γ interoperability
β assuring preservation & persistence
β incorporating rights management
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US: Digital Library Initiatives
α Consortia under National Science
Foundation funding research
β DLI 1: 1994-98, 3 agencies, $24M, 6 large
projects
β DLI 2: 1999-2006, 8 agencies, $60+M, 77
large & small projects in various categories
β joint international projects
β National Science, Mathematics, Engineering,
and Technology Education Digital Library
γ some 200 demonstration & development projects
α Funding pretty much over by 2005
β funding now in related areas
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EU: DELOS
α DELOS Network of Excellence on
Digital Libraries
β many projects throughout European Union
γ heavily technological
β
β
β
β
many meetings, workshops
to some degree resembles DLIs in the US
well funded, long range
unlike in the US support still going on
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Research issues
α understanding objects in DL
β representing in many formats
α
α
α
α
α
α
α
metadata, cataloging, indexing
conversion, digitization
organizing large collections
managing collections, scaling
preservation, archiving
interoperability, standardization
accessing, using, searching
β federated searching of distributed collections
α evaluation of digital libraries
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DL projects in practice
α Heavily oriented toward
institutions & their missions
β in libraries, but also others
γ museums, societies, government, commercial
γ come in many varieties
α Spread globally
β including digitization
α U California, Berkeley’s Libweb
“lists over 7300 pages from libraries in over
125 countries”
α Spending increasing significantly
β often a trade-off for other resources
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Connection?
α DL research & DL
practice presently
are conducted
β mostly independently of
each other
β minimally informing each
other
β and having slight, or no
connection
α Parallel universes
with little
connections &
interaction, at
present
β not good for either
research or practice
© Tefko Saracevic
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Part 8. Conclusions
IS contributions
α IS effected handling of
information in society
α Developed an organized body of
knowledge & professional
competencies
α Applied interdisciplinarity
α IR reached a mature stage
β penetrated many fields & human
activities
α Stressed HUMAN in human-computer
interaction
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Challenges
α Adjust to the growing & changing social &
organizational role of information & related
information infrastructure
α Play a positive role in globalization of
information
α Respond to technological imperative in human
terms
α Respond to changes from information to
communication explosion
β bringing own experiences to resolutions,
particularly to the web
α Join competition with quality
α Join DIGITAL with LIBRARIES
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Juncture
α IS is at a critical juncture in its
evolution
α Many fields, groups ... moving into
information
β big competition
β entrance of powerful players
β fight for stakes
α To be a major player IS needs to progress
in its:
β
β
β
β
research & development
professional competencies
educational efforts
interdisciplinary relations
α Reexamination necessary
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Thank you Miró!
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Bibliography
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http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
Hjørland, B. (2000). Library and Information Science: Practice,
Theory, and Philosophical Basis. Information Processing &
Management, 36 (3), 501-531.
Pettigrew, K.E. & McKechnie, L.E.F. (2000). The use of theory in
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Saracevic, T. (1999). Information Science. Journal of the American
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http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko/JASIS1999.pdf
Saracevic, T. (2005). How were digital libraries evaluated?
Presentation at the course and conference Libraries in the Digital
Age (LIDA)30 May-3 June 2005, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Available:
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko/DL_evaluation_LIDA.pdf
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the American Society for Information Science, 49 (4), 327-355.
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