Abstract not found

The objective of the paper is to amalgamate theories of text retrieval from various research traditions into a cognitive theory for information retrieval interaction. Set in a cognitive framework, the paper outlines the concept of polyrepresentation applied to both the user's cognitive space and the information space of IR systems. The concept seeks to represent the current user's information need, problem state, and domain work task or interest in a structure of causality. Further, it implies that we should apply different methods of representation and a variety of IR techniques of different cognitive and functional origin simultaneously to each semantic full-text entity in the information space. The cognitive differences imply that by applying cognitive overlaps of information objects, originating from different interpretations of such objects through time and by type, the degree of uncertainty inherent in IR is decreased. Polyrepresentation and the use of cognitive overlaps are associated with, but not identical to, data

AB AB AB Org IN AF AD Source JN SO SO Year parse from PB PY DP Type DT PT PT Title TI TI TI Author AU AU AU Terms DE DE MH Table 3. Number of articles kept from each data source in combined data set.

Introduction When we first encounter a scientific discipline, or a subject domain, we often would need to have a good standing point and as many signposts as possible to guide ourselves through the field. On the other hand, more experienced researchers and domain experts would need effective ways to track the development of their own fields and extract crucial signs of the dynamics of a scientific discipline (Bush, 1945). The World Wide Web (Web) has revolutionized the way we search for information. On today's Web we can easily access a vast amount of information on almost any subject. However, a profound challenge to many of us in the modern information society is to transcend the vast amount of information in scientific literature and access scientific knowledge at a higher level. The meta-knowledge, the knowledge of how particular knowledge structures have been perceived, should become an integral part of the scientific discipline involved, and it should be presented with simplicity and clarity for scholarly communication as well as public understanding. Domain visualization is an exciting field of study that addresses these q

We report on our findings regarding authors ’ use of theory in 1,160 articles that appeared in six information science (IS) journals from 1993–1998. Our findings indicate that theory was discussed in 34.1 % of the articles (0.93 theory incidents per article; 2.73 incidents per article when considering only those articles employing theory). The majority of these theories were from the social sciences (45.4%), followed by IS (29.9%), the sciences (19.3%), and humanities (5.4%). New IS theories wereproposedby71authors.Whencomparedwithpreviousstudies,ourresultssuggestanincreaseintheuse of theory within IS. However, clear discrepancies were evidentintermsofhowresearchersworkingindifferent subfields define theory. Results from citation analysis indicate that IS theory is not heavily cited outside the field,exceptbyISauthorspublishinginotherliteratures. Suggestions for further research are discussed. Background “Having atheory ” is today the mark of research seriousness and respectability. Theory is, of course, convenient, and helps to organize and communicate unwieldy data and simplify the terrible complexities of the social world, matters thatmaywellbemoreimportanttothefieldthanwhetheror not agiven theory is true of false. (Van Maanen, 1998, p. xxix). It is a well-known fact that IS lacks good theories. (Hjørland, 1998, p. 607) [Theories] may be expressed or represented in written and graphical form. They may well inspire and guide practical achievements of aconcrete form. Yet atheory remains amental construct. A“good ” theory is one that matches well our perception of whatever the theory is about. The closer the match, the better the theory is. (Buckland, 1991, p. 19) Working with conceptual frameworks and empirical research has never been easy. (Chatman, 1996, p. 205)

Many people contributed to the completion of my dissertation, and it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the numerous forms of assistance I received. Faculty and staff of the University of Michigan (UM) School of Information (SI) provided unlimited support, encouragement, and guidance throughout my studies. Initial thanks go to my committee members. My chair, Associate Professor Margaret Hedstrom, mentored me through each stage of the program. Her wisdom, her confidence in me, and her ability to offer comments of just the right kind at exactly the right time helped me to sharpen my thinking, to improve my writing, and to achieve more than I thought possible. Associate Professor Paul N. Edwards introduced me to the field of science studies and offered advice that enhanced the presentation of my research. Professor Jeffrey K. MacKie Mason and Assistant Professor Brian Athey accepted a methodological approach different from their own and offered comments that substantially improved my dissertation. Others at SI also assisted me. Associate Dean and Professor Gary Olson played a substantial role in making SI a wonderful place to pursue a doctoral education. Professor Judy Olson provided support at a critical time in my research. Associate Dean

: This paper builds on numerous suggestions of the need for a theoretical basis for knowledge organization from the point of view of interest, concern, or problem (e.g., domain, ecology, use environment, or language game). This is accomplished by first developing a possible theoretical understanding of why knowledge organization schemes tend toward stability through structuration and autopoiesis. In understanding this tendency, the possibility of promoting (desirable) change is also considered through activity. Second, the paper considers the requirements for the contextualization provided by such mappings. Finally, the case of the Internet is briefly explored. All of this provides a recipe a theory for practice `stew,' which would highlight the possibility that just as structures (e.g., classification schemes) enable actions (e.g., information retrieval, knowledge transfer), actions enable structures. For this theoretical stew to influence practice, rules and resources---the structure...

Future users of digital objects will likely have numerous tools for discovering preserved digital objects relevant to their interests, but making meaningful use and sense of the digital objects will also require contextual information. This paper provides an analysis of context, distinguishing three main ways in which that term has been used within the scholarly literature. I then discuss contextual information within digital collections. I present a framework for contextual information that is based on nine classes of contextual entities: object, agent, occurrence, purpose, time, place, form of expression, concept/abstraction, and relationship. The paper then discusses existing standards and guidance documents for encoding information related to the nine classes of contextual entities, and it concludes with a discussion of potential implications for descriptive practices through the lifecycle of digital objects. “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. ”- Eliel Saarinen (The Maturing Modern, 1956) “…if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. ”- Douglas Adams (1980) 1.

Many scientific fields share common interests for research and education. Yet, very often, these fields do not communicate to each other and are unaware of the work in other fields. Understanding the commonalities and differences among related fields can broaden our understanding of the interested phenomena from various perspectives, better utilize resources, enhance collaboration, and eventually move the related fields forward together. In this article, we present a conceptual framework, namely the Information-Model or I-model, to describe various aspects of information related fields. We consider this a timely effort in light of the evolutions of several information related fields and a set of questions related to the identities of these fields. It is especially timely in defining the newly formed Information Field from a community of twenty some information schools. We posit that the information related fields are built on a number of other fields but with their own unique foci and concerns. That is, core components from other fundamental fields interact and integrate with each other to form dynamic and interesting information related fields that all have to do with information, technology, people, and organization/society. The conceptual framework can have a number of uses. Besides providing a unified view of these related fields, it can be used to examine old case studies, recent research projects, educational programs and curricula concerns, as well as to illustrate the commonalities and differences with the information related fields.

Most existing knowledge organization systems (KOS) are based on disciplines. However, as research is increasingly multidisciplinary, scholars need tools allowing them to explore relations between phenomena throughout the whole spectrum of knowledge. We focus on the dependence relationship, holding between one phenomenon and those at lower integrative levels on which it depends for its existence, like alpinism on mountains, and mountains on rocks. This relationship was first described by D.J. Foskett in the context of CRG's work towards a non-disciplinary scheme. We discuss its possible status and representation in three kinds of KOS: thesauri, classification schemes, and ontologies. In thesaural structures, dependence could be one of the subtypes of associative relationships (RT) which have been wished to enrich their semantic functions. In classification, it could act together with hierarchy as a structuring principle, providing a way of connecting and sorting main classes based on integrative levels. In ontologies, it could be defined as a dependsOn direct slot, expressing the fact that through it a class does not inherit all properties of the other class on which it depends. We argue that providing search interfaces with crossdisciplinary links of this kind can give users more adequate tools to examine the recorded knowledge through