L&I SCI 110: Information science and information theory Instructor: Xiangming(Simon) Mu Sept. 9, 2004

Information Science = Information Technology ?

Information –To do with “being informed”, with reduction of ignorance and of uncertainty –Sensory perception, comprehension, or psychological processes –Broadly associated with messages Definition –As signals or messages for decisions involving little or no cognitive processing. Information is treated as the property of a message –As directly involving cognitive processing and understanding. Information is associated with a transaction between a record and user –As a context. Information is a message that are cognitively processed in a context—situation, task, problem-at-hand, etc. Motivation/intentionality Social horizon—culture, work

Information Perspectives –Information as process: concern the communication procedure –Information as knowledge: concern the impact, subject, and relations –Information as thing: concern the record, the document, and data (representation of knowledge)

Information Science Definition: –effective communication of knowledge records—”literature”—among humans in the context of social, organizational, and individual need for and use of information Information science is defined by –the problems it has addressed –the methods it has used for their solutions over time. Characteristics: –Interdisciplinary in nature –Inexorably connected to information technology –An active participant in the evolution of the information society (human/social dimension) Important ideas –Information retrieval –Relevance: related to information needs and assessment –Interaction: between IR system and human beings –Citation index: mapping of literature

Structure of Information Science Information Analysis (domain cluster) –Literatures and their structure –Text as objects –Communication in various population –Social context –Information use, seeking and behavior Information Retrieval (retrieval cluster) –IR theory and algorithms –Practical IR processes and systems –Human-computer interaction –User studies –(Digital) library systems –Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC)

Information Retrieval Systems-centered approach –Concentrated on retrieval systems and processes –Model based algorithms and evaluations Human-centered approach –Concentrated on cognitive, interactive, and contextual end of the process –Humans as the proper center of IR (feedback IR) The future of IR –Integrate both systems and human factor

Relevance What is relevance –Effectiveness of exchange of information between people and IR systems –Based on human judgments (subjectivity) Types of relevance –System or algorithmic relevance—between query and information objects as retrieved (Comparative effectiveness) –Topical or subject relevance—between subject expressed in query and subject covered by retrieved texts (aboutness) –Cognitive relevance or pertinence—between state of knowledge or cognitive information need and texts retrieved (quality) –Situational relevance or utility—between situation, task or problem and texts retrieved (usefulness/appropriateness) –Motivational or affective relevance—between intents, goals, and motivations and texts retrieved (satisfaction) Applications –Search Engines (Google and Yahoo): relevance/indexing ? A good idea to let Google to retrieve your lost files? Which level of relevance involved? How about image search? –Online recommendationsOnline recommendations

Disciplinary Relations Librarianship and Information Science –Both concern the effective utilization (organization, preservation, and use) of records. –Different in problems, theories, experimentation, tools, and strength Computer Science and Information Science –Computer science is about algorithms that describe and transfer information (symbol-oriented) –Information science is about the very nature of information and its use by humans (user-oriented) Meta-information, seeking, searching, retrieving, filtering; use, quality, value, evaluation, and impact Example: –information visualization (Visual Thesaurus, Table Hunter)Visual ThesaurusTable Hunter –Interface design (Google/Yahoo) Overlap –Expert systems, knowledge bases, hypertext, human-computer interaction

Questions Information science = information technology ? Information science = information seeking ? Information science = information record ?

Our goal Find, study, and solve information related problems