Search (26 results, page 2 of 2)

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Abstract

This chapter from The Sayers Memorial Volume summarizes Farradane's earlier work in which he developed his major themes by drawing in part upon research in psychology, and particularly those discoveries called "cognitive" which now form part of cognitive science. Farradane, a chemist by training who later became an information scientist and Director of the Center for Information Science, City University, London, from 1958 to 1973, defines the various types of methods used to achieve classification systems-philosophic, scientific, and synthetic. Early an he distinguishes the view that classification is "some part of external 'reality' waiting to be discovered" from that view which considers it "an intellectual operation upon mental entities and concepts." Classification, therefore, is to be treated as a mental construct and not as something "out there" to be discovered as, say, in astronomy or botany. His approach could be termed, somewhat facetiously, as an "in there" one, meaning found by utilizing the human brain as the key tool. This is not to say that discoveries in astronomy or botany do not require the use of the brain as a key tool. It is merely that the "material" worked upon by this tool is presented to it for observation by "that inward eye," by memory and by inference rather than by planned physical observation, memory, and inference. This distinction could be refined or clarified by considering the initial "observation" as a specific kind of mental set required in each case. Farradane then proceeds to demolish the notion of main classes as "fictitious," partly because the various category-defining methodologies used in library classification are "randomly mixed." The implication, probably correct, is that this results in mixed metaphorical concepts. It is an interesting contrast to the approach of Julia Pettee (q.v.), who began with indexing terms and, in studying relationships between terms, discovered hidden hierarchies both between the terms themselves and between the cross-references leading from one term or set of terms to another. One is tempted to ask two questions: "Is hierarchy innate but misinterpreted?" and "ls it possible to have meaningful terms which have only categorical relationships (that have no see also or equivalent relationships to other, out-of-category terms)?" Partly as a result of the rejection of existing general library classification systems, the Classification Research Group-of which Farradane was a charter member decided to adopt the principles of Ranganathan's faceted classification system, while rejecting his limit an the number of fundamental categories. The advantage of the faceted method is that it is created by inductive, rather than deductive, methods. It can be altered more readily to keep up with changes in and additions to the knowledge base in a subject without having to re-do the major schedules. In 1961, when Farradane's paper appeared, the computer was beginning to be viewed as a tool for solving all information retrieval problems. He tartly remarks:
The basic fallacy of mechanised information retrieval systems seems to be the often unconscious but apparently implied assumption that the machine can inject meaning into a group of juxtaposed terms although no methods of conceptual analysis and re-synthesis have been programmed (p. 203). As an example, he suggests considering the slight but vital differences in the meaning of the word "of" in selected examples: swarm of bees house of the mayor House of Lords spectrum of the sun basket of fish meeting of councillors cooking of meat book of the film Farradane's distinctive contribution is his matrix of basic relationships. The rows concern time and memory, in degree of happenstance: coincidentally, occasionally, or always. The columns represent degree of the "powers of discrimination": occurring together, linked by common elements only, or standing alone. To make these relationships easily managed, he used symbols for each of the nine kinds - "symbols found an every typewriter": /O (Theta) /* /; /= /+ /( /) /_ /: Farradane has maintained his basic insights to the present day. Though he has gone an to do other kinds of research in classification, his work indicates that he still believes that "the primary task ... is that of establishing satisfactory and enduring principles of subject analysis, or classification" (p. 208).

Footnote

Original in: The Sayers memorial volume: essays in librarianship im memory of William Charles Berwick Sayers. London: The Library Association 1961. S.120-135.

Pages

S.196-209

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Abstract

The second Cranfield experiment (Cranfield II) in the mid-1960s challenged assumptions held by librarians for nearly a century, namely, that the objective of providing subject access was to bring together all materials an a given topic and that the achieving of this objective required vocabulary control in the form of an index language. The results of Cranfield II were replicated by other retrieval experiments quick to follow its lead and increasing support was given to the opinion that natural language information systems could perform at least as effectively, and certainly more economically, than those employing index languages. When the results of empirical research dramatically counter conventional wisdom, an obvious course is to question the validity of the research and, in the case of retrieval experiments, this eventually happened. Retrieval experiments were criticized for their artificiality, their unrepresentative sampies, and their problematic definitions-particularly the definition of relevance. In the minds of some, at least, the relative merits of natural languages vs. indexing languages continued to be an unresolved issue. As with many eitherlor options, a seemingly safe course to follow is to opt for "both," and indeed there seems to be an increasing amount of counsel advising a combination of natural language and index language search capabilities. One strong voice offering such counsel is that of Robert Fugmann, a chemist by training, a theoretician by predilection, and, currently, a practicing information scientist at Hoechst AG, Frankfurt/Main. This selection from his writings sheds light an the capabilities and limitations of both kinds of indexing. Its special significance lies in the fact that its arguments are based not an empirical but an rational grounds. Fugmann's major argument starts from the observation that in natural language there are essentially two different kinds of concepts: 1) individual concepts, repre sented by names of individual things (e.g., the name of the town Augsburg), and 2) general concepts represented by names of classes of things (e.g., pesticides). Individual concepts can be represented in language simply and succinctly, often by a single string of alphanumeric characters; general concepts, an the other hand, can be expressed in a multiplicity of ways. The word pesticides refers to the concept of pesticides, but also referring to this concept are numerous circumlocutions, such as "Substance X was effective against pests." Because natural language is capable of infinite variety, we cannot predict a priori the manifold ways a general concept, like pesticides, will be represented by any given author. It is this lack of predictability that limits natural language retrieval and causes poor precision and recall. Thus, the essential and defining characteristic of an index language ls that it is a tool for representational predictability.

Footnote

Original in: International classification 9(1982) no.3, S.140-144.

Pages

S.390-402

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Source

Journal of documentation. 40(1984), S.247-263

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Source

SIGIR forum. 15(1980), S.6-36

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Source

International classification. 9(1982), S.140-144

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Pages

S.125-138