1. Information Transfer and Information Science
LIS510

2. What is Information? There is no “correct” definition
The act of informing or being informed.
(American Heritage Dictionary, 1991)
The action of informing; communication of the knowledge; news of some fact or occurrence.
(Oxford English Dictionary, 1989)
Knowledge or intelligence unknown to the receiver before its receipt.
(Longman-Tsinghau English-Chinese Science and Technology Dictionary, 1996)
Something told; news or knowledge given.
(Oxford English-Chinese Reader’s Dictionary)
Information informs: it provides something unknown to the receiver. This can be viewed as creating knowledge. So, becoming informed is becoming knowledgeable.

3. What is Information?
There are various ways of thinking about information, e.g. information as code, data, document, speech, gesture, image, thing, and so on.
What definition do you think is most useful?
How do you think about information?

4. What is Information?
Information as a meaningful message from an informant that may influence the recipient in considerations, decisions and actions.

5. What is Information? Information must
Be something, although the exact nature (substance, energy, or abstract concept) is not clear;
Be “new”: repetition of previously received messages is not informative
Be “true”: false or counterfactual information is “mis-information”
Be “about” something

6. What is Information?
Everyone must feel that they know what information is. No life form … could function if it was not continually receiving and processing information, and it has always been thus. Despite the fact that information is so essential to the functioning of any organism, and that people have put a lot of effort into the development of ‘Information Science’, ‘Information Systems’, ‘Information Management’, ‘Information Theory’, and the like, it may surprise you to know that there is no commonly agreed definition for the concept of information.
PG Diploma: Computers in Education. (nd).

7. What is Information?
“...progress is bedeviled by the frequently contradictory nature of existing definitions, and by the absence of any consensus on the nature and characteristics of information. Hence, even the information science profession, whose interest lies in the study of information and related phenomena, is unable to agree upon an operational definition.”
Martin, W.J. (1988). “The Information Society” Aslib.

8. What is Information? Information as thing
Buckland is thinking about the fundamental nature of information and claims that it has been ambiguous
He attempts to clarify the concept, arguing that it can be seen as “process,” “knowledge,” and “thing”
In what sense can we consider information a thing?

9. What is Information?
Assumes that information includes becoming informed, with the reduction of ignorance and of uncertainty
He looks at the ways in which the term is used in the field
As process:
When we are informed what we know is changed It is the act of informing...; communication of the knowledge or “news” of some fact or occurrence
As knowledge
That which is perceived in “information-as-process;” the “knowledge communicated concerning some fact, subject or event”

10. What is Information? As thing
Is also used attributively for objects, such as data and documents, referred to as “information” because they are regarded as being informative; as “having the quality of imparting knowledge or communicating information”
This has been controversial
Information has no materiality or energy
It is all contained in the context of communication
How does Buckland respond to these criticisms?

11. Information infrastructure
The amount of information grows over time.
We live in the information age.
Is there a sense of unease.
information explosion
flood of information
bombarded by information
information overload (most widely used)
Is that true?

12. Information infrastructure
We can talk about an overload of data.
WWW
advertising, esp. spam
traffic signs
background music in shopping malls
These things become information when they are relevant to you.
Are you well-informed?

13. Access to information
First there has to be data that encodes the information.
There there has to be some way that the person with the information need finds the data if they need it.
And has be some way a person is made aware of the data if there is reason to believe that it will be information to her/him.
All of these are jobs of and for information professionals.

14. Access to information
Librarians as information professionals have been devoted to the collection, organization, and dissemination of information on demand by its users. As information professionals, we are specially interested and involved in two major activities: information transfer and information services.
Libraries are a part of the information infrastructure that connect people with data/information.

15. How is information transferred?
Creator  Disseminator  Receiver
information cycle
information (knowledge) is created
it is distributed
it is disseminated
it is used
end-use
intermediate use
new information (knowledge) is created from old
two ways to look at it
actors
channels

16. Actors: Creators of information
authors
artists/musicians
database producers
archivists
educators
financial industry
other?

17. Products books magazines databases web pages music files
records of any kind
services where information is key
other?

18. Product/service
digital technology detaches the information from its physical container
information becomes a service, rather than a product.
this is a tax-relevant distinction
in Europe, there is a low VAT rate for books/journals
but electronic journals are a considered a service and get full VAT.

19. “Servicification" of information
Information is moving from product to service.
To update a book
you have to print all copies anew
replace all old copies
To update a web site is much easier but the web site is expected to be up-to-date.
This has great potential for the information professional.

20. Distributors publishers vendors Internet service providers
really only arrange for transport, like pizza delivery man
at most as disseminator
Other?

21. Disseminators educational institutions libraries museums business
government
other?

22. Users This is all the rest of the community.
Users may be end-consumers.
Users may be authors.

23. Disintermediation
The web has brought about a possibility to dis-intermediate.
Authors can directly bring content to users without the use of distributors or disseminators.
However this is potential and has not been widely adopted.
Good example: academic author.
Bad example: real estate sales.

24. Channels in an information infrastructure: Networks
Internet • Financial networks
Telephone network • Online services
Public data network • Power networks
Cellular networks • Broadcast TV
Satellite networks • Power networks
Radio networks • Transportation
Cable TV network • Public Safety networks
Direct Broadcast
satellite

25. Use of information "outlets"
Trends
Television viewing is up
broadcast television is going down
cable television is going up
Video watching up
Internet usage is up strongly
Usage of print media is declining
Internet use mainly comes at cost of television viewing

26. Print (contents?) industry
Book and e-book market is growing, but reading time remains constant.
Periodicals remains steady.
Printed newspaper reading is declining

27. Databases Database numbers are growing
There is a tendency to disintermediation
There is tendency away from metadata only databases towards full-text databases
This implies a fuzzy border with the "print" industry
If you count database purely as abstracting services they are probably declining

28. The role of libraries in the information infrastructure
Dissemination of information
Provision of services
Advocate for literacy
Development of electronic information networks
Introduction of information technologies to the users

29. Libraries: Statistics
94,345 school libraries and media centers
10,452 special libraries
9,445 public libraries
3,480 academic libraries
1,326 government libraries
Number of non-school libraries are falling.

30. Internet email and WWW They have been fastest growing media
There are digital divides by race, age, income.
has the biggest individual share, the rest are various uses of the WWW. IP phone is small but growing.
Internet use is 44% from home,20% from work, 12% from school, 5% from libraries.
Libraries play an important role to reduce the digital divide.

31. Telephone system It has a dual role as
end medium
carrier of computer network traffic
Cell phone usage is still growing strongly in the US.
The industry as a whole still suffers from an overexpansion in the 90s

32. What is Information Science?
The study on:
Use of information
Information sources
Information development
Handling and disseminating of information in libraries and information units
(Harrods’ Librarians’ Glossary, 1995)
The discipline investigates:
Characteristics of information
Nature of information transfer process
Aspects of collecting, collating and evaluating information
Use of technology for organizing and disseminating information
(International Encyclopaedia of Information and Library Science, 1997)

33. Information Science and Library Science
A generic term for the study of libraries and information units, the role they play in society, their various component routines and processes, and their history and future development.
(Harrods’ Librarians’ Glossary, 1995)
Information Science Compared to Library Science:
Closely related and largely overlapping
Different emphases and different approaches

34. Library and Information Science
Library and Information Science is the science concerned with the following aspects of information:
Origin
Dissemination
Acquisition
Properties
Classification
Organization
Storage
Retrieval
Interpretation
Use

35. Major Issues in Information Science Directly Affecting Libraries
User-oriented Information Systems
Information needs vs. Information wants
Information seeking vs. Information gathering
Information use and Information users

36. Factors that Impair/Prevent Information Seeking
Physical aspects
Policy and procedural aspects
Economic and financial aspects
Legal aspects
Social aspects
Cultural aspects
Linguistic aspects
Technological aspects

37. Information storage & retrieval
this area is now more know as information retrieval
Ideally, one needs to know the retrieval needs before designing the organization of the information
has to do with anything of how the user gets to the information out of an information system.
it is different from data retrieval since the retrieved data has to be “relevant” to the user.
it is very difficult to say what “relevance” is, objectively.

38. information retrieval performance
the traditional methods are
precision = number of relevant documents retrieved divided by total number of retrieved documents
recall = number of relevant documents retrieved divided by total number of relevant document.
they only evaluate a search!

39. Recall and Precision Recall--response to query
Relevance--materials in system relevant to query
Precision--proportion of materials retrieved that are relevant to query.
Recall= number of relevant documents retrieved
total number of relevant documents in the file
Precision= number of relevant documents retrieved____
total number of documents retrieved in the file
Inverse relation between recall and precision.

40. RECALL AND PRECISION EXAMPLE
Total number of relevant items in the system 50
Total of retrieved items
Total of relevant items retrieved
Total of irrelevant items retrieved
Recall = 12/50 = .24
Precision = 12/20 = .60

41. IMPROVING RECALL AND PRECISION
to get more relevant items
to relax search terms and to make query broader
Improving precision
to get less irrelevant items
to narrow search terms and make query narrower

42. Information storage
can mean the preparation of information before searching
which fields are searchable
can there be a variety of means to rank searches?
is there use of a controlled vocabulary
difficult to make general conclusions but to say that advanced search features are not much used.

43. Human-computer interface
tries to understand how users work with computer systems
the idea is to build “user-friendly” systems
but don’t leave that to a “computer designer”
note that information systems go way beyond computers.
Web usability is a big topic.

44. Human-computer interface
natural language processing is still in its infancy
speech recognition is the best developed part
others are working on connecting computers to the brain

45. Artificial intelligence
This has been around for a while.
The field has developed a number of theoretical tools
Some of them are being used in practice now. Things like RDF, the Resource Description Framework, are based on artificial intelligence theory. It is a tool to aggregate knowledge from web resource.

46. Defining information & its value
There is debate on the nature of
data (things that can be processed in the information system)
knowledge (stuff that is in people’s head)
information (something between data and knowledge; meaning given to data)
Wisdom: “knowledge applied for the benefit of humanity”

47. Scientific view of information
usually information is modeled as something that reduces uncertainty
people have a rough idea about something, say tomorrow’s temperature
the information is the fact that this something will actually take a precise value, when we know what the temperature is or when we have less uncertainty.
usually this uses probability theory.

48. Value of information
economists can value information precisely but their definition is useless for practical purposes
much of the work then involves some cost/benefit analysis. in such analysis one can reach almost any result one wants.

49. Elements of value-added in libraries
access to resources
accuracy (for example of bibliographic data)
browsing (like in library stacks)
currency (things are up-to-date)
flexibility (through human interaction)
formatting (laying out the collection, signs)
interfacing (probably close to flexibility)
ordering (buy access to things)
access to means to get to resources

50. Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis
Bibliometrics: the application of quantitative methods to the study of information
Citation analysis: frequency and pattern of citations (e.g. references cited in articles and books)
Two important concepts
bibliographic coupling means two documents share some reference
co-citation means two documents are cited by the same documents

51. Management and Administrative Issues
This is an expanding area in libraries.
Rather than collecting physical books, libraries have to negotiate on-line access.
Area covers all of information policy. Example problems are
copyright
censorship
Measuring performance is part of user studies

52. Management and Administrative Issues
Identifying and selecting information technologies
Dealing with human factors in technology
Developing management information systems/information resources management/records management
Measurement and evaluation of library and information services

53. Information architecture
art and science of organizing information and its interfaces so that seekers find what they want quickly
mainly used with respect to large web sites. it looks at the contents rather than technical factors or the look-and-feel
A related idea is usability

54. Knowledge Management this comes from the business environment
Knowledge assets of an organization

55. Discussion
Where do libraries and librarians fit in the developing information infrastructure?
Is Information Science part of Library Science? Is Library Science part of Information Science? Are they just two different names for the same thing? Just how do the two fit together any way? Or do they?
In what ways are libraries proactive shapers of society and in what ways are they reactive mirrors of society?
What does it mean that we’re an information society?