LIS 386.13
Information Technologies
and the
Information Professions
Overview of
Information Storage and Retrieval,
Part 1
R. E. Wyllys
Copyright © 2000 by R. E. Wyllys
Last revised 2002 Sep 10
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Lesson Objectives
• You will gain an understanding of
– The principles and tools used for
organizing information, both in libraries and
in other collections of informationcontaining materials
– The historical development of these
principles and tools
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Early Beginnings
• Hammurabi, who ruled Babylon during
1792-1750 BCE, is reputed to have built
an archive containing records of his
reign.
• Similar claims have been made for
Nebuchadrezzar, who ruled Babylon
over a thousand years later, during 605561 BCE.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Early Beginnings
• By far the greatest ancient collection of records was that of the
Library of Alexandria.
– Modeled after an earlier library in Athens (of which little is
known), the Alexandrian Library was founded around 300 BCE.
Its most notable head was Eratosthenes (276-194 BCE) (who is
also famous for having performed the first reasonably accurate
calculation of the circumference of the earth).
– Housing primarily scrolls, the Alexandrian Library flourished for
nearly 7 centuries, till its final destruction in 391 CE.
• The primary method of organization of the scrolls is believed to have been
by kinds of writers (historians, lawmakers, philosophers, poets, etc.),
subdivided by literary forms and other topics.
• Further suborganization was probably by size, in various storage
containers.
• Separate lists are believed to have been kept of the contents of storage
containers and the rooms in which the containers were located.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Early Beginnings
• During the Middle Ages in Europe (c. 5001400), scrolls, codex books, and other
records were kept in Christian monasteries
and nunneries throughout Europe, and in
Islamic universities in Spain, North Africa, and
the Near East.
– Developed in the 4th century CE, the codex is the
type of book we know today: viz., a stack of sheets
of paper or parchment bound along one edge by
thread and/or glue, usually with covers of leather
and/or cardboard.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Early Beginnings
• Books in medieval collections were usually
organized by broad subject categories and by
author or other source.
– Books were often chained to the bookcase or alcove in
which they were stored.
• Why chains? Because when books existed only in
handwritten copies, each individual physical volume was
extremely valuable and, hence, a potential target for
thieves.
– The chain was attached to the spine of the book, and
the book was placed on its shelf with its spine, and
chain, to the back. Thus there was no indication on the
visible edge of the book as to the book's identity.
– Separate lists were kept that displayed the names of
the books in the order of their placement on the
shelves and the bookcases or alcoves.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
• After Johann Gutenberg (c. 1400 - c. 1468) brought
movable-type printing to Europe (c. 1440), multiple
copies of books became commonplace.
– Note: One of the 5 extant copies of Gutenberg's printing of
the Bible is in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center at
The University of Texas at Austin.
• The advent of printing in Europe brought about a
remarkable culture shock, rivaled only by that of the
Internet in our day.
– It is estimated that as of 1440 at most 1 million manuscripts
and books existed in all of the western world.
– It is further estimated that by 1500 (i.e., within 50-60 years
after Gutenberg's introduction of printing), over 50 million
physical volumes had been printed in Europe.
– Before Gutenberg's work, only the wealthiest people could
own even one or two books. After printing arrived, middleclass people could afford books.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
• Nevertheless, even after printing came to the
Western World, the organizing of books in
collections posed few problems
– Institutions continued the kind of shelf
organization that had been practice prior to
printing: viz., grouping by broad subject and
author, with separate shelflists providing access
to the physical volumes.
– Individuals usually owned only such a small
number of books that organizing them was not
seen as a problem.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
• Before the 20th century, only a very few wealthy
people owned numbers of books that would seem
impressive today. Such people were quite
exceptional.
– Thomas Jefferson's personal library at Monticello was
considered the largest private collection ever amassed in the
United States up till his time.
– From his library Jefferson sold about 6,500 books (the bulk
of his collection) to re-establish the Library of Congress after
the LC was badly burned in 1814 as part of the War of 1812.
– In his library Jefferson organized his books into three broad
categories: Memory (history), Reason (philosophy), and
Imagination (fine arts). Within each category, he arranged
the books mainly by the author's name.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
• A better understanding of the impressive size
(impressive both for his time and for ours) of
Thomas Jefferson's personal library can be
gained by considering the sizes of the
collections of some major U.S. academic
libraries in 1831, as shown on the following
slide.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
Sizes of the Collections* of Major
U.S. Academic Libraries in 1831
Harvard
39,605 Rutgers
6,500
Brown
38,800 Amherst
5,980
Yale
25,500 Univ. of North Carolina
4,800
Dartmouth
11,500 Columbia
4,580
Princeton
8,000 Williams
4,019
Univ. of Virginia
8,000 Univ. of Pennsylvania
2,000
Georgetown
7,000 Wesleyan
1,500
*From: Rider, Fremont. The Scholar and the Future of the
Research Library. New York, NY: Hadham; 1944.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
• The collections of the foregoing academic
libraries and other large (for their time)
libraries prior to the last quarter of the 19th
century were typically arranged by locally
established subject categories and, within a
category, by author
– Academic library subject categories usually
reflected the academic departments within each
college or university
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Modern Beginnings
• Significant changes in the organization of
U.S. libraries were introduced in the last
quarter of the 19th century, through the
development and rapid promulgation of two
new major subject classification systems:
– Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), 1873-76
– Library of Congress Classification System (LCCS)
1891-93
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Dewey Decimal Classification
• In 1873 Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) applied his
newly developed Dewey Decimal
Classification to the library of Amherst
College, of which he was the director
– Dewey based his DDC in part on a subject
classification system invented by W. T. Harris at
the St. Louis Mercantile Library
– Dewey published the DDC in 1876, the year in
which he also founded the American Library
Association (ALA)
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Dewey Decimal Classification
• The DDC divides all knowledge into 10 classes, each
of which is divided into 10 subclasses, each of which
is divided into 10 subsubclasses, etc.
• The major classes are:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
000-099 General Works
100-199 Philosophy and Psychology
200-299 Religion
300-399 Social Sciences
400-499 Language
500-599 Natural Sciences and Mathematics
600-699 Technology
700-799 The Arts
800-899 Literature and Rhetoric
900-999 History, Biography, and Geography
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Library of Congress Classification
• The Library of Congress Classification System was
developed at the Library of Congress (LC) by Charles
Cutter (1837-1903) in 1891-93 and further refined by
Herbert Putnam (1861-1955) after he became the
Librarian of Congress in 1899 (from which post he
retired in 1939).
– Unlike Dewey's philosophically oriented effort to
encompass all knowledge for all time in the DDC,
Cutter's approach to classification was empirically
oriented.
– Cutter based the LCCS on the actual collection of the
LC as it existed in the early 1890s.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Library of Congress Classification
The principal categories in the LCCS are
• A General works
• B Philosophy, psychology,
religion
• C History, auxiliary science
• D History (Old World)
• E American history
• F History by region
• G Geography, anthropology,
sports
• H Social sciences
• J Political science
• K Law
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
L Education
M Music
N Fine arts
P Language & literature
Q Science
R Medicine
S Agriculture
T Technology
U-V Military & naval science
Z Bibliography, library science
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Library of Congress Classification
• Within the broad single-letter categories of the LCCS,
further subdivisions are indicated by letters and numbers,
again determined empirically (rather than by a rigid pattern
of subdivision as in the DDC).
• Some examples of the LCCS classifications of books in
the UT-Austin General Libraries:
–
–
–
–
–
DS 486: C. Stephen's book on the archaeology of Delhi, India
GZ 972.015: a collection of essays on the Maya
KB 76: L. N. Brown's book on French administrative law
KWX 465: C. C. Joyner's book on U.S. activities in Antarctica
Q 130: S. A. Ambrose's book on women in science and
engineering
– QA 303: R. Courant's book on differential and integral calculus
– Z 674: F. L. Miksa's biography of Charles A. Cutter
– Z 696: F. L. Miksa's book on the DDC
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Colon Classification
• It should be noted that other classification
schemes have been developed that avoid some
of the limitations of the DDC and LC systems.
– Some variants of the Universal Decimal Classification
(which is essentially the DDC adapted for European
use) employ combinations of class numbers.
– A notable and different approach to classification is that
developed by Shiyali R. Ranganathan (1892-1972). It
is known as Colon Classification because of its use of
the colon symbol, ":", as a tool in displaying its strings
of classification characters. Colon classification can be
said to incorporate within the classification itself some
of what the DDC and LC employ subject headings to
achieve.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
What Is the Purpose of
Classifying InBEs in a Collection?
• The DDC and LC classification schemes were developed
with the goal of serving general-purpose library
collections, especially, public libraries.
– Which of them should be used in a particular collection?
– The best answer may well be, "Neither."
• A particular collection should be classified, i.e., organized,
according to the needs of its users.
– For example, the needs of the general public for medical
information, say, probably differ from those of health-sciences
professionals. A professional collection in a hospital would
undoubtedly serve better if organized according to the needs of
that hospital's staff than if organized according to the DDC.
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
What Is the Purpose of
Classifying InBEs in a Collection?
• I have actually heard professional librarians apologize to
me, as a library-school faculty member, because the items
in their special-purpose libraries were not organized
according to the DDC or the LC.
• My response is invariably to congratulate them for having
had the wisdom to develop classification schemes that
served their users rather than blindly adopting a scheme
developed for a different kind of user group.
– I have sometimes pointed out to them that they must have
forgotten what surely they were told in library school about
organizing materials to serve the users of those materials.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Physical Organization of Books in Libraries
• In libraries, books have traditionally been
organized so as to serve three main purposes:
– To provide groupings of books by subjects defined
broadly in some cases and narrowly in others
– To arrange books having closely related subjects in
an order (e.g., alphabetical by author) that enables a
user to find a particular book readily
– To facilitate browsing by users within subject
groupings
• Note: Browsing along the bookshelves has become
important only since the opening of stacks to library users.
Before the 20th century, most libraries restricted access to
the stacks only to library staff members (which is still the
practice in a few libraries)
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Physical Organization of Books in Libraries
• In most libraries, the three traditional main
purposes sometimes conflict with other needs.
– Some books (e.g., oversize books) must be
arranged on special shelves that accommodate
their height rather than adjacent to other books on
the same subject
– Some information-bearing entities (InBEs) must be
stored according to the needs of their format (e.g.,
microfiche) rather than adjacent to InBEs on the
same subject but in other formats
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Physical Organization of Books in Libraries
• The traditional three main purposes can sometimes
conflict with each other. For example, books on
– The theory of statistics are usually classed in QA 276
– Applications of statistics in business are often classed in
HA 76
– Applications of statistics in demography are often classed
in HQ 766
– Applications of statistics in lawsuits are often classed in
KF 320
– Applications of statistics in epidemiology are often classed
in RA 644
• Obviously, a user wishing to compare statistical
theory with its applications will not necessarily find
pertinent books close to each other in a library.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Physical Organization of Books in Libraries
• In the late 1960s, Ohio State University (OSU)
launched an interesting experiment in its medical
library:
– A new building was constructed with closed stacks (i.e.,
no direct user access) in which books were stored in
plastic trays on special shelves designed to hold the trays
– Books were placed in the trays by hand but strictly in
order of accession (when first added to the collection) or
in order of return after use by a user
– Barcode labels on the books and the trays were scanned
into a computer, so that at any given time every book in
the collection was known to be physically in a particular
tray (though in different trays at different times)
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Physical Organization of Books in Libraries
– Computer-controlled industrial handling equipment
conveyed the trays between the circulation desk and the
shelf area
– A tray entering the shelf area was placed in the first
available slot on a shelf, and the computer made a record
associating the physical slot with the particular tray
– A user desiring book X had only to identify X to a clerk,
who entered the identification into the computer, thereby
initiating the retrieval of the tray containing X at that time
and the delivery of the tray to the circulation desk
– At the circulation desk, the clerk would remove book X
from the tray and charge it out to the user. Then the clerk
would put another book into the empty space in the tray
(recording that placement by using the barcode reader),
and the tray would be returned to the shelf area
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Physical Organization of Books in Libraries
• The OSU experiment had three goals:
– To demonstrate how the physical space required by this method of
storage could be a sharp reduction from that required by conventional
library stack areas
– To test the feasibility of using mechanical handling equipment (1) to
reduce significantly the numbers and costs of human staff required
(e.g., re-shelving of returned books was almost totally automated) and
(2) to speed up delivery of books to users
– To test how users would react to the trade-off of quick and easy
delivery of books to them vs. having to do their browsing via a
computerized catalog rather than via direct access to bookshelves
organized in traditional fashion
• For reasons I do not know, OSU has abandoned this
experiment.
• Its interest for us here lies in its showing us how the storage
function can be separated from the browsing function in a library.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Finding Information via InBEs
• Thus far we have emphasized the storage of
books in libraries
– But there are many other kinds of informationbearing entities (InBEs): e.g., maps, letters,
personal diaries and journals, newspapers,
magazines, photographs, phonograph records,
movies
– Many of these types of InBEs do not lend
themselves easily to subject-oriented organization
• We need to consider the ways in which a user
may want to try to identify InBEs relevant to a
particular purpose or interest that he or she
has at a particular time
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Finding Information via InBEs
• Typical ways of identifying desired InBEs include
– Author(s) or other persons (e.g., editor) or corporate bodies
responsible for the intellectual content of the InBE
– Source (e.g., institution) with which the InBE is associated
– Title
– Series (if any) to which the InBE belongs
– Subject, as indicated by
• Classification (according to DDC, LC, or other classification schemes [e.g., the
Universal Decimal Classification])
• Subject headings (e.g., from a list such as the LC Subject Headings or the
Medical Subject Headings [MeSH])
• Index terms and phrases (e.g., as assigned by human indexers or by
programmatic means); also called "keywords", "descriptors", "content tags", etc.
– Type of content (e.g., text, engineering drawing, map, still
photograph, audio or video recording)
– Physical format (.e.g, microfilm, LP, CD, DVD, computer file)
– Date of creation or revision of InBE
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Finding Information via InBEs
• We can generalize the idea of finding a desired InBE in the
following way:
– With each InBE we can associate various "retrieval tags" or "labels",
each of which reflects one of the types of approaches shown in the
previous slide. That is, the InBe will have
• Author tag(s) (if it has someone or something that is responsible for its
intellectual content)
• A title tag
• A series tag (if it is part of a series by which users may wish to identify
it)
• Subject-content tags
• and so on
• When each InBE in a collection has a set of associated
retrieval tags, a user can manipulate the tags (e.g., using a
computer program [or, in the past, catalog cards]) to inform
himself or herself about InBEs in the collection that appear
to be relevant to the user's interest of the moment.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Subject Indexing and Library Practice
• Libraries initially provided information about their holdings
via handwritten and printed lists.
• The first use of a card catalog in a library appears to have
occurred at the University of Parma in the 1760s.
– Further use of card catalogs occurred in France as one of the
many innovations (e.g., the metric system) resulting from the
French Revolution in and after 1789.
– The first card catalog in the U.K. appears to have been that of the
library of the London Society of Telegraph Engineers in 1820.
• The idea of using card catalogs rather than lists of
holdings spread slowly.
– For example, at the Harvard University Library a card catalog was
introduced in 1840, but it was for the use only of the staff of the
library. The Harvard Library did not provide a card catalog for
public use till 1862.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Subject Indexing and Library Practice
• As catalog cards gradually gained popularity during the
19th century, their physical limitations helped set standard
library practices
– The minimum size of type (or handwriting) for legibility constrained
the amount of information that could be placed on a single physical
card
– Librarians tried to avoid using more than one physical card to
present the basic information about a given book, since sets of 2 or
more cards for a book were harder to handle and to keep in correct
filing order
• Because of these physical limitations, librarians adopted
such practices as
– Listing no more than 3 authors for a work
– Rarely providing more than 3 subject-headings for a work
– Truncating excessively long titles (such as those often found in
works of the 17th century or earlier)
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Subject Indexing and Library Practice
• Some results of these practices
– The typical maximum length of the information on a
printed LC card is around 350 - 400 characters.
• Nowadays the standard means of storing and communicating
the cataloging information on a book is the book's MARC
(MAchine-Readable Cataloging) record. (MARC records are
prepared by catalogers at the Library of Congress and at major
research libraries, including the General Libraries of the
University of Texas at Austin, and are distributed around the
world electronically.) MARC records for typical books contain
650 - 700 bytes of information, more than 1-1/2 times as much
as the traditional printed cards.
– For a non-fiction book, the average number of subject
headings on a printed LC card or in a MARC record is
1.6.
• But the average number of subject-content tags associated with
the MedLine entry for a journal article is over 40.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Subject Indexing and Library Practice
• The comparison of subject headings for books
vs. subject-content tags for MedLine, the online
service of the National Library of Medicine(
NLM), entries reveals a striking difference
between
– the extent to which library practice records the subject
content of a book, and
– the extent to which NLM practice records the subject
content of a journal article--an InBE that is usually
much shorter than a book.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Subject Indexing and Library Practice
• In short, standard library practice provides only quite
limited access to the subject content of a book.
– In general, this makes it much harder for a user to distinguish
among, or often even find, books relevant to his or her interest of
the moment than to distinguish among or find relevant journal
articles.
– For a variety of reasons, especially money, standard library
practice is unlikely to change in this respect.
• With respect to other kinds of retrieval tags, standard
library practice also typically provides less access than
many computer-assisted indexing procedures (i.e.,
retrieval-tag-applying procedures) provide to the kinds of
InBEs they deal with.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Finding Information via InBEs
• From a general viewpoint, all the retrieval tags that
have been associated with each InBE (in a
collection of InBEs) are--or should be--potentially
usable to help identify those InBEs that are likely to
be relevant to a user's inquiry.
– Some kinds of tags will be used more frequently, and
other kinds less frequently, but it is clearly desirable that
all kinds of tags be equally easy for the user to employ in
her or his search.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Definition of
Information Storage and Retrieval
• We may define "information storage and
retrieval" (ISR) as the theory and practice of
– Acquiring, or at least identifying, InBEs for a
collection
– Associating a set of retrieval tags with each InBE
– Storing the InBEs and their associated tags in ways
that will facilitate the use of the tags for retrieval
• In the case of InBEs that are identified rather than
acquired, what is stored is the locations of the InBEs
• The InBEs and their associated tags may, or may not,
be stored in the same place
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Definition of
Information Storage and Retrieval (cont'd)
– Providing means by which a user may use the
retrieval tags to identify InBEs likely to be relevant to
his or her interest of the moment
– Providing means by which the identified, potentially
relevant InBEs can be made available to the user
for her or his examination
– Often, providing in addition, means by which (1) a
user may define a continuing interest and (2) the
ISR system will check newly acquired (or identified)
InBEs to determine whether they appear relevant to
the user's continuing interest
• Note: This is usually called "active dissemination"
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Information Storage and Retrieval
• ISR, as just defined,
– Dates from the early 20th century
– Is practiced in many environments: archives,
documentation centers, information centers,
learning-resources centers, libraries, museums,
records centers, Web-search services, etc.
– Subsumes librarianship, in the sense that
• We can say that librarianship is ISR as practiced in places
called "libraries" and with emphasis on a limited number of
types of InBEs: books, magazines, etc.
– Is also known (especially outside the U.S.) by such
names as "documentation" and "informatics".
– May be thought of as the applied side of information
science.
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LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Taylor's Definition of ISR
• Here is a classic definition of information science
(IS), written in 1963 by an ISR pioneer, Robert S.
Taylor:
– "Information Science is the science 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.
– "The processes include the origination, dissemination,
collection, organization, storage, retrieval,
interpretation, and use of information.
– "The field is derived from or related to mathematics,
logic, linguistics, psychology, computer technology,
operations research, the graphic arts,
communications, library science, management, and
some other fields."
• IS may be thought of as the theoretical side of
ISR.
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Organizational History of ISR and IS in the U.S.
• In the U.S., ISR and IS have been the
focus of a professional organization
whose name has evolved over the
years
– 1937 National Microfilm Association
– 1946 American Documentation Institute
– 1966 American Society for Information
Science
– 2000 American Society for Information
Science and Technology
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Organizational History of ISR and IS in the U.S.
• In 1937 the National Microfilm Association was
formed by people concerned with the then rapidly
developing microfilm industry.
– Microfilm (both 35mm and 16mm film) began to be used in
the 1920s to provide a highly compact medium for storing
business records and a compact, long-lasting medium for
copying materials like newspapers that deteriorate quickly.
– The NMA attracted to its membership not only people in the
microfilm industry but also librarians, archivists, and other
people interested both in the physical medium of microfilm
and in using it to provide storage of, and access to, a variety
of InBEs.
• Reflecting the broadening of its membership, the
NMA changed its name in 1946 to the American
Documentation Institute.
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Organizational History of ISR and IS in the U.S.
• During the 1950s and early 1960s, the growing
capabilities of computers attracted people of
even more varied backgrounds into the field of
using computers and related technologies to help
solve the problems of handling InBEs.
– Not only did computers offer direct uses in terms of
storage of InBEs, but also they offered new tools for
investigating graphic, linguistic, mathematical, and
psychological phenomena involved in the generation
and communication of information.
– Taylor's definition of IS reflects the way in which this
era led graphics specialists, linguists, mathematicians,
psychologists, etc., to become interested in the
problems of ISR.
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Organizational History of ISR and IS in the U.S.
• The continual broadening of the community of ISRinvolved people led in 1966 to a further name change, to
the American Society for Information Science (ASIS).
• In recent years, the role of technology in ISR has steadily
increased. After a lengthy debate within ASIS, its
membership voted to change the name to American
Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST),
effective officially at the organization's annual meeting in
November 2000.
• Also deserving mention in connection with the ISR
community is the Library and Information Technology
Association (LITA), a division of the American Library
Association (ALA).
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
ISR and IS Organizations outside the U.S.
• ASIST has members all around the globe, but
there are also comparable organizations based in
other countries. Examples*:
– Aslib, the Association for Information Management
(formerly the Association of Special Libraries and
Information Bureaux) (U.K.)
– l'Association des professionnels de l'information et de
la documentation (France)
– Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA)
– Canadian Association for Information Science and
Technology (CAIS)
– Deutsche Gesellschaft für Informationswissenschaft
und Informationspraxis (Germany)
*Suggestions for additions to these examples will be welcomed.
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
International Federation for
Information and Documentation
• An international "umbrella" organization for
professional associations and people in the fields
of IS, ISR, and documentation is the Fédération
Internationale d'Information et de Documentation
(FID), headquartered in Brussels.
– FID was founded in 1885 to foster the development of
the Universal Decimal Classification.
– FID has broadened its scope to include organizations
and individuals around the world who are interested in
IS, ISR, and documentation.
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Organizations with Interests Related to IST
• Numerous organizations have areas of concern that
include specialized applications of ISR. A few
examples* are:
– Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and many of its
Special Interest Groups (SIGs), including
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Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI)
Computer Uses in Education (SIGCUE)
Hypertext, Hypermedia and Web (SIGWEB)
Information Retrieval (SIGIR)
Knowledge Discovery in Data (SIGKDD)
Management of Data (SIGMOD)
Management Information Systems (SIGMIS)
– Association for Information Management Professionals (ARMA)
[formerly the Association of Records Managers and Administrators]
– Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)
*Suggestions for additions to these examples will be welcomed.
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Organizations with Interests
Related to IST (cont'd)
– Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS)
– Drug Information Association (DIA)
– Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
(HIMSS)
– International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions (IFLA)
– International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA)
– International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
– Medical Library Association (MLA)
– Patent Information Users Group (PIUG)
– Society of American Archivists (SAA)
– Society for Information Management (SIM)
– Special Libraries Association (SLA)
*Suggestions for additions to these examples will be welcomed.
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions
Overview of
Information Storage and Retrieval
• This concludes Part 1 of this overview of
ISR.
• You may click below to go to
– Part 2
– Part 3
School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin
LIS 386.13, Information Technologies & the Information Professions