Hunting & Gathering

Recognizes generate, test, regenerate; or evaluation and feedback: this assertion has been a theme in several of the others. It is closely linked to both multiple iterations and to embracing failure. Again, time constraints and the expectations of others may limit the degree to which any individual searcher can incorporate evaluation and feedback. This does not mean, though, that we should not seek social changes and instruments of assistance.

Relieves burden of representation on system or cataloger: under many of the systems within the formal bibliographic apparatus it is incumbent on the cataloger, indexer, or other agent of representation to determine what concepts are worthy of representation and by what manner they should be represented. So long as the assumptions of the agent or agency are synchronized with the needs and representation codic abilities of users, there is likelihood of success. The assumption that a patron asking a question in the appropriate system manner will receive a packet of information likely to resolve a need rests on a simplistic (though not always inappropriate) model of user needs and abilities. The first major step in the relieving of the burden of representation was the construction of postcoordinate indexing; users no longer had to guess exact strings of words, and indexers no longer had the burden of creating complex representations. The challenge now is to ask: How does the digital environment enable us to take yet another such step? Do the sales tracking and customer reviews of commercial Web sites serve as examples?

Shifts information professional to authority on accomplishing function: this is an assertion of potential (perhaps it might better be called a hope). If the field of information science/studies/management is a scholarly field and profession, just what is it that we hold in common with one another that is not in common with other fields? This vexing question has had numerous responses over the decades. The shift toward a functional focus and an engineering (in the most human sense) foundation may give us a means to respond in a robust manner.

We must now have a means by which to close this session of our colloquy. We might look to Patrick Wilson’s assertion here:

[T]he final test of the adequacy of decisions is in the consequences. If we are happy, or at least satisfied, with the results of our decisions, we have no cause to complain about the antecedents of those decisions, including the information supply on which they were based. If events turn out well, in our eyes, then we have no basis for criticism of our role in bringing about the events or of the information supply we used. (1977, p. 68)

Notes

Chapter 1

1. West (1994) observes: “Our great, great grandfathers … learned mostly from doing—from imitating and helping, from repeating tasks, and from making mistakes—relying more on hand and eye than on word and phrase” (p. 686). Similarly, Barlow (1999) comments: “The act of throwing a javelin requires a more complete set of understandings than does book learning” (p. 26).

2. While we do not hold credentials in the field, we have made considerable use of the work of Tooby and Cosmides, especially their work with Barkow, The Adapted Mind, which centers on “the complex, evolved psychological mechanisms that generate human behavior and culture.” The editors note: “[An] assumption made by most of the contributors is that the evolved structure of the human mind is adapted to the way of life of the Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, and not necessarily to modern circumstances.”

3. This may be the best point to insert the comment of Stavely (1993): “The librarian of the future will be like a Maine guide (who, by the way, is so important to the Maine tourist industry that he [sic] is certified by a state agency).”

4. P. Wilson (1977) asserts: “All the documents in the library are immediately available to me, but they are not all accessible to me” (p. 88). He then goes on to elaborate three barriers to accessibility: linguistic constraints (“Unless someone else will translate them, they are of no use to me at all”); conceptual constraints (“I cannot understand them, though I can understand the language in which they are written”); and critical constraints (“I do not feel competent to analyze and evaluate the contents of the literature”).

5. Robertson, Maron, and Cooper (1982) note: “For years the concept of relevance has been the subject of much discussion and controversy … it is best defined … as a relation between a document and a person, relative to a given search for information” (p. 3).

6. The term “bricoleur” is used here in much the same way as intended by Lévi-Strauss to indicate thinking and doing with the materials at hand. This is different from earlier uses of the term when it had the connotation of the “savage mind” that dealt with matters at hand and then had thoughts disappear rather than flourish. We might say that the early use was a form of the mind/body dichotomy argument. Lévi-Strauss elevated the concept, in a sense, seeing a mind/body integration, with the physical human: “... as a thinker: considering, reconsidering, always with a view to what is available (Harper, 1987, pg. 74).

7. Marcia Bates (1989b) contrasts the classic model of document retrieval:

document => representation => [match?] <= representation <= query

with the wider variety of techniques actually employed by searchers: “So throughout the process of information retrieval evaluation under the classic model, the query is treated as a single unitary, one-time conception of the problem. Though this assumption is useful for simplifying IR system research, real-life searches frequently do not work this way.”

Chapter 2

1. For a litany of “traps, diseases and malaises” associated with the information explosion, see R. S. Wurman, Information Anxiety: What to Do When Information Doesn’t Tell You What You Need to Know (New York: Bantam, 1990), pp. 124-129.

2. A current example of a strong “scientific model” of research to “successfully extract technical and scientific information from all available sources” in the field is advanced by D. E. Zimmerman and M. L. Muraski, The Elements of Information Gathering: A Guide for Technical Communicators, Scientists, and Engineers (Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, 1995).

3. Miller (1996) offers a treatise on “scientific methods” that illuminates the concerns cited by Blair (1990, pp. 71-104).

4. Entman’s description of frames and salience is quite similar to Marr’s definition of “representation” as “a formal system for making explicit certain entities or types of information.” See David Marr, Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982), p. 20.