User:KYPark/001

''' A DIRECT APPROACH TO INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Table of Contents''' WHAT WHY HOW 1. INTRODUCTION 2. THE LINE OF ATTACK 3. SYSTEMS VS. USERS 3.1 Discrimination 3.2 Prediction 4. DOCUMENTS VS. SURROGATES 5. THE THEORY OF INTERPRETATION 5.1 Denotation and Connotation 5.2 The Theory of Ogden and Richards 5.3 Implications for Information Retrieval 6. PROPOSAL FOR FILE ORGANIZATION 6.1 Incentives 6.2 Extracts as Indexing Sources 6.3 Extracts as Review Sources 7. CONCLUSION 8. REFERENCES

1. INTRODUCTION
In this study I am concerned with file organization of scientific literature in view of discovering useful information efficiently; largely, the problem of information retrieval. It seems that information retrieval now implies something more than a mechanistic and technical problem, something that gradually resolves into complexity of human communication, understanding and knowledge. Similar views have recently been expressed by Mitroff, et al.1 and by Brookes2 in a wider context. "As we may think" or look back, our initial hope for information retrieval has been faded in spite of tremendous development of computer techniques and others made for the past thirty years. This frustration was anticipated as early as 1948 by Wiener.3 Still we are not sure if we could restore the hope in the near future, particularly along the same line of thought.

As to scientific information* in the wide sense, the following fundamental questions may be raised: Three Similar & Different Threads of Questioning

[*1] David Blair (2002), "Knowledge Management: Hype, Hope, or Help?" Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 1019-1028. Abstract

[*2] Marcia Bates (1999), "The Invisible Substrate of Information Science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol.50, no.12, pp. 1043-1050. Text

[*3] Kyung-Youn Park (1975), A Direct Approach to Information Retrieval


 * What is scientific information?
 * Why should scientific information be organized?
 * How can scientific information be organized?

Obviously, information retrieval is most closely related to the last question. But I feel that the other two questions should also be taken into consideration when we intend to discuss information retrieval carefully. I selected the prefatory statements by Popper4, by Bernal,5 and by Wells6 as the most thought-provoking with respect to these three fundamental questions. And the statements represent my standpoint that I have taken in approaching the problems of information retrieval.

In the following chapters, I discuss first some fundamental considerations for information retrieval. I shall understand the narrowed retrieval problems mainly owing to Fairthorne's insightful contention.7 Further I shall attempt to understand the problems in the light of communication and information which appear to be almost undefined. For this purpose I attend to Cherry's critical view on human communication8 and to Ogden and Richards' classic theory of interpretation.9 In short I am seeking for a solution to the problems of information retrieval, by questioning what influences those who communicate and obtain information.

Eventually, I propose a way of file organization as most essential for information retrieval. The proposal is only crude at this stage. In fact, the discussion of fundamental considerations is thus intended to make clearer and justify to some extent the idea which might require further elaboration and application.

The main feature of the proposal is to use in retrieval those extracts in which the source document cites, describes, criticizes, and/or collates other documents. Such extracts seem to provide concise but significant clues for discriminating the cited documents. The most concise clues should be regarded as significant when they are coherent in their proper environments or contexts.


 * * Honestly I cannot quite clearly distinguish between scientific information and scientific knowledge, and again science, in the sense that these are sometimes interchangeable. Information and knowledge may represent the same thing in essence, which I shall understand as information particularly when it is oriented to the specific use or value.

AFTERTHOUGHTS
Adapted from Triangle of reference See also Talk:Triangle of reference
 * Quadrant information cycle


 * Subjective encoder-decoder axis
 * Objective encoding-decoded axis 
 * See also
 * Ian Mitroff
 * B. C. Brookes
 * Vannevar Bush
 * Norbert Wiener
 * K. R. Popper
 * J. D. Bernal
 * H. G. Wells
 * Colin Cherry
 * C. K. Ogden
 * I. A. Richards
 * R. A. Fairthorne
 * Information retrieval
 * Human communication
 * Interpretation
 * Scientific information
 * Information
 * Knowledge
 * Science
 * Sociology of science or "science of science"
 * As We May Think