Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.2
Contrasting representations of Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain. Source: Railton
2005.
analogous to cataloging in distinction from classification or character-
ized as data contrasted with subject or topic retrieval. In addition to the
value of unified description, recognition of the common principle cata-
loging shares with classification and subject determination restores theo-
retical significance and value to it, congruent with the often dominant
actual use of information retrieval systems for identifying, recalling, and
retrieving known items or the works of a given author (Smithson 1994;
Shneiderman 2003, 54).
Scholarly and Ordinary Discourses
Different, and partly independent, scholarly discourses have implicitly
endorsed selection power as a design principle for information retrieval
systems. Ordinary discourse discussions of information retrieval also
value that concept.
The interconnected fields of librarianship and indexing have endorsed
as central aims—in different ways and not always explicitly—concepts
analogous to or necessary components of selection power. Within librar-
ianship, bibliographic control was seminally defined in the post-1945
period as “mastery over written and published records” (UNESCO/
Library of Congress 1950, 1); it is strongly analogous to selection power.
Without bibliography, the “records of civilization would be an uncharted
chaos of miscellaneous contributions to knowledge, unorganized and
inapplicable to human needs” (UNESOC/Library of Congress 1950, viii).
At that stage of technological development, the creation of records and
indexes for bibliographic organization required direct human intervention
