Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
operational information retrieval systems appears theoretically weak. The
distinction is being increasingly eroded in practice, with operational sys-
tems possibly selecting records or documents by directly Boolean opera-
tions but ordering retrieved documents on the basis of other indicators.
If the proposed model is to be regarded as a scientific advance, it must
have a dual aspect that comprehends empirical reality and selectively
absorbs existing models. Empirical reality should be explained as fully,
powerfully, and as parsimoniously as possible. The pervasive presence of
labor, choice, and technology in information retrieval practice promises
a strong degree of correspondence to empirical reality. Human labor is
immediately present as the description labor of cataloging, classification,
and database description. Choice has been persistently embodied in prac-
tice and, more recently, increasingly recognized theoretically and valued
as both selection from retrieval results and the filtering of information.
Diffused from the 1950s, modern information technologies, to which
aspects of human mental labor can be and increasingly are transferred,
are now pervasive in information retrieval.
The reader can now anticipate this topic's approach and structure.
The encompassing theories adapted for development and the mode of
presentation derives from the human sciences. The author understands
human history as a cumulative progression: human labor acting upon
the naturally given and humanly modified environment as the primary
source for progressive change developed by, but not exclusive to, Marx.
Distinctions from Ferdinand de Saussure's
Course in General Linguistics
are adapted for understanding transformations of meaning in full-text
retrieval. Material from information theory and computer science is also
understood from the perspective of the human sciences. Information the-
ory is utilized to comprehend patterns of occurrence and recurrence of
words and phrases. The discussion is informed throughout by an under-
standing of the computational process derived directly from automata
theory, or the theory of computation.
Characteristic of the human sciences, the mode of presentation is prima-
rily discursive and aims to obtain broad intelligibility. Logically expressed
schemata are introduced, accompanied by diagrams more often encoun-
tered in the formal sciences but intended here to reveal the underlying
