Search (14 results, page 1 of 1)

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Content

"This letter considers some main arguments in Professor Bates' article (2008), which is part of our former debate (Bates, 2005,2006; Hjoerland, 2007). Bates (2008) does not write much to restate or enlarge on her theoretical position but is mostly arguing about what she claims Hjorland (2007) ignored or misinterpreted in her two articles. Bates (2008, p. 842) wrote that my arguments did not reflect "a standard of coherence, consistency, and logic that is expected of an argument presented in a scientific journal." My argumentation below will refute this statement. This controversy is whether information should be understood as a subjective phenomenon (alone), as an objective phenomenon (alone), or as a combined objective and a subjective phenomenon ("having it both ways"). Bates (2006) defined "information" (sometimes, e.g., termed "information 1," p. 1042) as an objective phenomenon and "information 2" as a subjective phenomenon. However, sometimes the term "information" is also used as a synonym for "information 2," e.g., "the term information is understood to refer to one or both senses" (p. 1042). Thus, Professor Bates is not consistent in using the terminology that she herself introduces, and confusion in this controversy may be caused by Professor Bates' ambiguity in her use of the term "information." Bates (2006, p. 1033) defined information as an objective phenomenon by joining a definition by Edwin Parker: "Information is the pattern of organization of matter and energy." The argument in Hjoerland (2007) is, by contrast, that information should be understood as a subjective phenomenon all the way down: That neither the objective definition of information nor "having it both ways" is fruitful. This is expressed, for example, by joining Karpatschof's (2000) definition of information as a physical signal relative to a certain release mechanism, which implies that information is not something objective that can be understood independently of an observer or independently of other kinds of mechanism that are programmed to be sensitive to specific attributes of a signal: There are many differences in the world, and each of them is potentially informative in given situations. Regarding Parker's definition, "patterns of organization of matter and energy" are no more than that until they inform somebody about something. When they inform somebody about something, they may be considered information. The following quote is part of the argumentation in Bates (2008): "He contrasts my definition of information as 'observer-independent' with his position that information is 'situational' and adds a list of respected names on the situational side (Hjoerland, 2007, p. 1448). What this sentence, and much of the remainder of his argument, ignores is the fact that my approach accounts for both an observer-independent and a contextual, situational sense of information." Yes, it is correct that I mostly concentrated on refuting Bates' objective definition of information. It is as if Bates expects an overall appraisal of her work rather than providing a specific analysis of the points on which there are disagreements. I see Bates' "having it both ways": a symptom of inconsistence in argumentation.
Bates (2008, p. 843) further writes about her definition of information: "This is the objectivist foundation, the rock bottom minimum of the meaning of information; it informs both articles throughout." This is exactly the focus of my disagreement. If we take a word in a language, it is understood as both being a "pattern of organization of matter and energy" (e.g., a sound) and carrying meaning. But the relation between the physical sign and its meaning is considered an arbitrary relation in linguistics. Any physical material has the potential of carrying any meaning and to inform somebody. The physical stuff in itself is not information until it is used as a sign. An important issue in this debate is whether Bates' examples demonstrate the usefulness of her own position as opposed to mine. Her example about information seeking concerning navigation and how "the very layout of the ship and the design of the bridge promoted the smooth flow of information from the exterior of the ship to the crew and among the crewmembers" (Bates, 2006, pp. 1042-1043) does not justify Bates' definition of information as an objective phenomenon. The design is made for a purpose, and this purpose determines how information should be defined in this context. Bates' view on "curatorial sciences" (2006, p. 1043) is close to Hjorland's suggestions (2000) about "memory institutions," which is based on the subjective understanding of information. However, she does not relate to this proposal, and she does not argue how the objective understanding of information is related to this example. I therefore conclude that Bates' practical examples do not support her objective definition of information, nor do they support her "having it both ways." Finally, I exemplify the consequences of my understanding of information by showing how an archaeologist and a geologist might represent the same stone differently in information systems. Bates (2008, p. 843) writes about this example: "This position is completely consistent with mine." However, this "consistency" was not recognized by Bates until I published my objections and, therefore, this is an indication that my criticism was needed. I certainly share Professor Bates (2008) advice to read her original articles: They contain much important stuff. I just recommend that the reader ignore the parts that argue about information being an objective phenomenon."
References Bates, M.J. (2005). Information and knowledge: An evolutionary framework for information science. Information Research, 10(4), paper 239. Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/10-4/paper239.html. Bates, M.J. (2006). Fundamental forms of information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(8), 1033-1045. Bates, M.J. (2008). Hjorland's critique of Bates' work on defining information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(5), 842-844. Hjoerland, B. (2000). Documents, memory institutions, and information science. Journal of Documentation, 56, 27-41. Hjoerland, B. (2007). Information: Objective or subjective-situational? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(10), 1448-1456. Karpatschof, B. (2000). Human activity. Contributions to the anthropological sciences from a perspective of activity theory. Copenhagen: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Retrieved May 14, 2007, from http://informationr.net/ir/ 12-3/Karpatschof/Karp00.html.

Date

22. 3.2009 18:13:27

Type

a

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Abstract

Recently, a new book on knowledge organization has been published by Greenwood Press. The title is 'Information seeking and subject representation: an activity-theoretical approach to information science'. This book presents a new general theory for information science and knowledge organization, based on a theory of information seeking. The author is Dr. Birger Hjørland, Royal School of Library and Information Science. In 1994, he presented his work on theory for KO at the 3rd International ISKO conference in Copenhagen. The book aims to provide both a new understanding for the foundations of information science and knowledge organization, and to provide new directions in research and teaching within these fields. KO (Hanne Albrechtsen) has interviewed Birger HjÝrland in Copenhagen about his views on knowledge organization and subject representation

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Abstract

This article contrasts Bates' understanding of information as an observer-independent phenomenon with an understanding of information as situational, put forward by, among others, Bateson, Yovits, Spang-Hanssen, Brier, Buckland, Goguen, and Hjorland. The conflict between objective and subjective ways of understanding information corresponds to the conflict between an understanding of information as a thing or a substance versus an understanding of it as a sign. It is a fundamental distinction that involves a whole theory of knowledge, and it has roots back to different metaphors applied in Shannon's information theory. It is argued that a subject-dependent/ situation specific understanding of information is best suited to fulfill the needs in information science and that it is urgent for us to base Information Science (IS; or Library and Information Science, LIS) on this alternative theoretical frame.

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Abstract

Epistemological theories of information science have a fundamental impact on theories about users, their cognition and information seeking behaviour, on subject analysis, and on classification. They also have a fundamental impact on information retrieval, on the understanding of 'information', on the view of documents and their role in communication, on information selection, on theories about the functions of information systems and on the role of information professionals. Asserts that information science must be based on epistemological knowledge, which avoids blind alleys and is not outdated. Shows limitations in the dominant approaches to information science and proposes alternative viewpoints

Type

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Abstract

This article presents a brief history of the term "information" and its different meanings, which are both important and difficult because the different meanings of the term imply whole theories of knowledge. The article further considers the relation between "information" and the concepts "matter and energy", "data", "sign and meaning", "knowledge" and "communication". It presents and analyses the influence of information in information studies and knowledge organization and contains a presentation and critical analysis of some compound terms such as "information need", "information overload" and "information retrieval", which illuminate the use of the term information in information studies. An appendix provides a chronological list of definitions of information.

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Abstract

The concept of information as we use it in everyday English, in the sense of knowledge communicated, plays a central role in contemporary society. The development and widespread use of computer networks since the end of World War II, and the emergence of information science as a discipline in the 1950s, are evidence of this focus. Although knowledge and its communication are basic phenomena of every human society, it is the rise of information technology and its global impacts that characterize ours as an information society. It is commonplace to consider information as a basic condition for economic development together with capital, labor, and raw material; but what makes information especially significant at present is its digital nature. The impact of information technology an the natural and social sciences in particular has made this everyday notion a highly controversial concept. Claude Shannon's (1948) "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is a landmark work, referring to the common use of information with its semantic and pragmatic dimensions, while at the same time redefining the concept within an engineering framework. The fact that the concept of knowledge communication has been designated by the word information seems, prima facie, a linguistic happenstance. For a science like information science (IS), it is of course important how fundamental terms are defined; and in IS, as in other fields, the question of how to define information is often raised. This chapter is an attempt to review the status of the concept of information in IS, with reference also to interdisciplinary trends. In scientific discourse, theoretical concepts are not true or false elements or glimpses of some element of reality; rather, they are constructions designed to do a job in the best possible way. Different conceptions of fundamental terms like information are thus more or less fruitful, depending an the theories (and in the end, the practical actions) they are expected to support. In the opening section, we discuss the problem of defining terms from the perspective of the philosophy of science. The history of a word provides us with anecdotes that are tangential to the concept itself. But in our case, the use of the word information points to a specific perspective from which the concept of knowledge communication has been defined. This perspective includes such characteristics as novelty and relevante; i.e., it refers to the process of knowledge transformation, and particularly to selection and interpretation within a specific context. The discussion leads to the questions of why and when this meaning was designated with the word information. We will explore this history, and we believe that our results may help readers better understand the complexity of the concept with regard to its scientific definitions.
Discussions about the concept of information in other disciplines are very important for IS because many theories and approaches in IS have their origins elsewhere (see the section "Information as an Interdisciplinary Concept" in this chapter). The epistemological concept of information brings into play nonhuman information processes, particularly in physics and biology. And vice versa: the psychic and sociological processes of selection and interpretation may be considered using objective parameters, leaving aside the semantic dimension, or more precisely, by considering objective or situational parameters of interpretation. This concept can be illustrated also in physical terms with regard to release mechanisms, as we suggest. Our overview of the concept of information in the natural sciences as well as in the humanities and social sciences cannot hope to be comprehensive. In most cases, we can refer only to fragments of theories. However, the reader may wish to follow the leads provided in the bibliography. Readers interested primarily in information science may derive most benefit from the section an "Information in Information Science," in which we offer a detailed explanation of diverse views and theories of information within our field; supplementing the recent ARIST chapter by Cornelius (2002). We show that the introduction of the concept of information circa 1950 to the domain of special librarianship and documentation has in itself had serious consequences for the types of knowledge and theories developed in our field. The important question is not only what meaning we give the term in IS, but also how it relates to other basic terms, such as documents, texts, and knowledge. Starting with an objectivist view from the world of information theory and cybernetics, information science has turned to the phenomena of relevance and interpretation as basic aspects of the concept of information. This change is in no way a turn to a subjectivist theory, but an appraisal of different perspectives that may determine in a particular context what is being considered as informative, be it a "thing" (Buckland, 1991b) or a document. Different concepts of information within information science reflect tensions between a subjective and an objective approach. The concept of interpretation or selection may be considered to be the bridge between these two poles. It is important, however, to consider the different professions involved with the interpretation and selection of knowledge. The most important thing in IS (as in information policy) is to consider information as a constitutive forte in society and, thus, recognize the teleological nature of information systems and services (Braman, 1989).

Type

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Abstract

The basic realist claim is that a mind-independent reality exists. It should be common sense knowledge to accept this claim, just as any theories that try to deny it soon become inconsistent because reality strikes back. In spite of this, antirealist philosophies flourish, not only in philosophy but also in the behavioral and cognitive sciences and in information science. This is highly problematic because it removes the attention from reality to subjective phenomena with no real explanatory power. Realism should not be confused with the view that all scientific claims are true or with any other kind of naiveté concerning knowledge claims. The opposite of realism may be termed antirealism, idealism, or nominalism. Although many people confuse empiricism and positivism with realism, these traditions are by nature strongly antirealist, which is why a sharp distinction should be made between empiricism and realism. Empirical research should not be founded on assumptions about "the given" of observations, but should recognize the theory-laden nature of observations. Domain analysis represents an attempt to reintroduce a realist perspective in library and information science. A realist conception of relevance, information seeking, information retrieval, and knowledge organization is outlined. Information systems of all kinds, including research libraries and public libraries, should be informed by a realist philosophy and a realist information science.

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Abstract

Theories of aboutness and theories of subject analysis and of related concepts such as topicality are often isolated from each other in the literature of information science (IS) and related disciplines. In IS it is important to consider the nature and meaning of these concepts, which is closely related to theoretical and metatheoretical issues in information retrieval (IR). A theory of IR must specify which concepts should be regarded as synonymous concepts and explain how the meaning of the nonsynonymous concepts should be defined

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Abstract

Information science has for a long time been drawing on the knowledge produced in psychology and related fields. This is reasonable, for the central issue in information science concerns individual users navigating information spaces such as libraries, databases, and the Internet, Thus, informations seeking is the fundamental problem in information science, while other problems, such as document representation, are subordinate. This book proposes a general theory of information seeking as a theoretical basis for information science

Content

Introduction - information seeking and subject representation - subject searching and subject representation data - subject analysis and knowledge organization - the concept of subject or subject matter and basic epistemological positions - methodological consequences for information science - science, discipline, and subject field as a framework for information seeking - information needs and cognitive and scientific development

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Content

"In a new article published in Journal of Documentation, 2002, I claim that the special competency of information specialists and information scientists are related to "domain analysis." Information science grew out of special librarianship and documentation (cf. Williams, 1997), and implicit in its tradition has in my opinion been a focus an subject knowledge. Although domain analysis has earlier been introduced in JASIST (Hjoerland & Albrechtsen, 1995), the new article introduces 11 Specific approaches to domain analysis, which I Claim together define the Specific competencies of information specialists. The approaches are (I) Producing and evaluating literature guides and subject gateways, (2) Producing and evaluating special classifications and thesauri, (3) Research an and competencies in indexing and retrieving information specialties, (4) Knowledge about empirical user studies in subject areas, (5) Producing and interpreting bibliometrical studies, (6) Historical studies of information structures and Services in domains, (7) Studies of documents and genres in knowledge domains, (8) Epistemological and critical studies of different paradigms, assumptions, and interests in domains, (9) Knowledge about terminological studies, LSP (Languages for Special Purposes), and discourse analysis in knowledge fields, (10) Knowledge about and studies of structures and institutions in scientific and professional communication in a domain, (11) Knowledge about methods and results from domain analytic studies about professional cognition, knowledge representation in computer science and artificial intelligence. By bringing these approaches together, the paper advocates a view which may have been implicit in previous literature but which has not before been Set out systematically. The approaches presented here are neither exhaustive nor mutually exhaustve, but an attempt is made to present the state of the art. Specific examples and selective reviews of literature are provided, and the strength and drawback of each of these approaches are being discussed. It is my Claim that the information specialist who has worked with these 1 1 approaches in a given domain (e.g., music, sociology, or chemistry) has a special expertise that should not be mixed up with the kind of expertise taught at universities in corresponding subjects. Some of these 11 approaches are today well-known in schools of LIS. Bibliometrics is an example, Other approaches are new and represent a view of what should be introduced in the training of information professionals. First and foremost does the article advocates the view that these 1 1 approaches should be seen as supplementary. That the Professional identity is best maintained if Chose methods are applied to the same examples (same domain). Somebody would perhaps feel that this would make the education of information professionals too narrow. The Counter argument is that you can only understand and use these methods properly in a new domain, if you already have a deep knowledge of the Specific information problems in at least orte domain. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that one becomes more competent to work in any field if orte does not know anything about any domain. The special challenge in our science is to provide general background for use in Specific fields. This is what domain analysis is developed for. Study programs that allow the students to specialize and to work independent in the selected field (such as, for example, the Curriculum at the Royal School of LIS in Denmark) should fit well with the intentions in domain analysis. In this connection it should be emphasized that the 11 approaches are presented as general approaches that may be used in about any domain whatsoever. They should, however, be seen in connection. If this is not the case, then their relative strengths and weaknesses cannot be evaluated. The approaches do not have the same status. Some (e.g., empirical user studies) are dependent an others (e.g., epistemological studies).
It is my hope that domain analysis may contribute to the strengthening of the professional and scientific identity of our discipline and provide more coherence and depth in information studies. The paper is an argument about what should be core teachings in our field, It should be both broad enough to cover the important parts of IS and Specific enough to maintain a special focus and identity compared to, for example, computer science and the cognitive sciences. It is not a narrow view of information science and an the other hand it does not Set forth an unrealistic utopia."

Type

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Abstract

Scholars have uncovered abundant data about the history of the term "information," as well as some of its many combined phrases (e.g., "information science," "information retrieval," and "information technology"). Many other compounds that involve "information" seem, however, not to have a known origin yet. In this article, further information about the phrase "information storage and retrieval" is provided. Knowing the history of terms and their associated concepts is an important prescription against poor terminological phrasing and theoretical confusion.

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Abstract

Concept theory is an extremely broad, interdisciplinary and complex field of research related to many deep fields with very long historical traditions without much consensus. However, information science and knowledge organization cannot avoid relating to theories of concepts. Knowledge organizing systems (e.g., classification systems, thesauri, and ontologies) should be understood as systems basically organizing concepts and their semantic relations. The same is the case with information retrieval systems. Different theories of concepts have different implications for how to construe, evaluate, and use such systems. Based on a post-Kuhnian view of paradigms, this article put forward arguments that the best understanding and classification of theories of concepts is to view and classify them in accordance with epistemological theories (empiricism, rationalism, historicism, and pragmatism). It is also argued that the historicist and pragmatist understandings of concepts are the most fruitful views and that this understanding may be part of a broader paradigm shift that is also beginning to take place in information science. The importance of historicist and pragmatic theories of concepts for information science is outlined.

Type

a

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Abstract

This article presents a socio-cognitive perspective in relation to information science (IS) and information retrieval (IR). The differences between traditional cognitive views and the socio-cognitive or domain-analytic view are outlined. It is claimed that, given elementary skills in computer-based retrieval, people are basically interacting with representations of subject literatures in IR. The kind of knowledge needed to interact with representations of subject literatures is discussed. It is shown how different approaches or "paradigms" in the represented literature imply different information needs and relevance criteria (which users typically cannot express very well, which is why IS cannot primarily rely on user studies). These principles are exemplified by comparing behaviorism, cognitivism, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience as approaches in psychology. The relevance criteria implicit in each position are outlined, and empirical data are provided to prove the theoretical claims. It is further shown that the most general level of relevance criteria is implied by epistemological theories. The article concludes that the fundamental problems of IS and IR are based in epistemology, which therefore becomes the most important allied field for IS.

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a

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a