Some quotes from the 1962 volume of American Documentation
I love when off site storage sends me the whole volume instead of just an article through ILL. I wanted to check on Taylor's article on questions [*] and I was flipping through...
an LC project for NSF figured that there were 30-35K journals in the world (which is about the number I've heard recently, but there's been 'an explosion' in the number of journals)(Bourne, p.160)
an article on the retrieval of information from medical records (Alberson & Kinkaid, n1, p.83)
"relevancy and pertinency in indexing" (Rees, n1, p93)
"patent indexing using links and roles" (Montague, n1, p104)
"semantic information" (Mahoney, n3, p276)
"the information system: too big and growing" (Schultz, n3, p288) "available equipment and procedures exhibit little prospect of coping successfully with the dynamic problems of information generation, transmission, and use created by the current scientific and technological 'explosion'"
Ha! Judging of relevance by titles -- about 50% (I'd been saying 40%, but I guess that's from another study) (Montgomery & Swanson, "Machinelike indexing by people" p359)
"A plan to reduce costs of technical library operations in the Department of Defense" (Langenbeck, n3, 295) (suggests cataloging in publication by producers of technical reports)
a citation of the famous Memex article :)
many, if not most of the authors were from for-profit companies!
"there is today no generally accepted method of comparing the effectiveness of different types of indexes. The needs of index users vary so greatly that even the most carefully planned test of retrieval efficiency can be challenged. An index which is perfect for one user can be almost worthless for another who has different needs... there are more and more indications that most indexing systems can be made to produce essentially the same degree of effectiveness. The real test is how well a given system serves its intended users..." (goes on to talk of exhaustivity issues, etc.)(Markus, n1, p16)
word co-occurrence for indexing -- an association map based on Pearson Correlation Coefficients (Doyle, p.382)
Was '62 a very good year? This was fun... but back to work :)
[*] Taylor, R. S. (1962). Process of asking questions. American Documentation, 13(4), 391-396. -- wow, the whole visceral, conscious, formalized, compromised thing references Perry 1961?
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Sunday, August 05, 2007
Re-reading Taylor '68, still a favorite
One of my favorite articles is R.S. Taylor's 1968 article on question negotiation [*]. I'm reading it again now and really looking at it closely. I actually thought to check, and DTIC has scanned the technical report that the C&RL article summarizes [**]. I always credited this article with the 4 levels of information need:
viseral
conscious
formalized
compromised
It turns out that this information appears in the lit review or background section, not in the results and conclusions. He must have gotten this from ? (wrote this part before the post that appears in the blog just before this...)
Love this quote. More to come on this article, I'm sure.
But routine automation is merely an extension of the control and warehousing functions of libraries. The work described here is an early effort to understand better the communications functions of libraries and similar types of information centers, because this is what libraries are all about. [emphasis his]
[*] Taylor, R. S. (1968). Question-negotiation and information seeking in libraries. College & Research Libraries, 29(3), 178-194. [**] Taylor, R. S. (1967). Question-negotiation and information-seeking in libraries No. AD0659468). Bethlehem, PA: Center for the Information Sciences, Lehigh University. Retrieved July 28, 2007, from http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/AD659468
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Friday, August 03, 2007
Pulliam for Director-at-Large
*not a solicited endorsement, just because I want to!* If you're in ASIS&T, be sure to vote. More importantly, consider voting for blogger and all-around fabulous librarian Beatrice Pulliam. She's done some great programs for NEASIST and has run the conference blog for the last couple of years. She's enthusiastic, has great ideas, and I believe will make great contributions to the society. We need more like her in leadership!
You should have gotten an e-mail from ASIS&T with voting information. Contact the office if you haven't received your login information.
This is my blog on library and information science. I'm into Sci/Tech libraries, special libraries, personal information management, sci/tech scholarly comms.... My name is Christina Pikas and I'm a librarian in a physics, astronomy, math, computer science, and engineering library. I'm also a doctoral student at Maryland. Any opinions expressed here are strictly my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or CLIS. You may reach me via e-mail at cpikas {at} gmail {dot} com.