Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
comments can be regarded as embodying ordinary discourse concepts.
For instance, a sociological study of communication in philosophy, which
stresses the importance of direct oral communication between significant
philosophers, criticizes literature discovery accomplished by “index-
ing and abstracting services (whether in printed media or electronically
online), which overload the channels rather than focusing them” (Collins
1998, 45). Therefore, ordinary discourse concepts—although elusive—
support the value of selection power.
The query transformation tradition of classic information-retrieval
research also values discriminatory power, but for a distinguishable end
that can be absorbed into selection power. The current argument values
the discriminatory power of an index term for its potential to directly
increase human selection and discrimination. Classic information-
retrieval research, by contrast, has valued discriminatory power as a
factor that assists automatic partitioning of documents or records (Van
Rijsbergen 1979, 29, 136). The valuing of discriminatory power by clas-
sic information-retrieval research constitutes partly independent support
for the value given to it here. The distinction in the ends for which it is
valued reveals that this aspect of classic information-retrieval research
can be absorbed into selection power as a special and incomplete case.
The absorption of particular aspects of query transformation further
indicates that the research tradition as a whole can be conceptually and
operationally subsumed into selection power as a special case within a
more encompassing theory. Therefore, this topic will not pursue oppo-
sition with query transformation, which served as one dialectical point
of departure for asserting the value of selection power (Wilson 1996c;
Warner 2000).
Particularly since the mid-1990s, studies within information science
have advocated selection, evaluation, and filtering as appropriate aims
for information retrieval, rather than recall of all and only all relevant
documents (Wilson 1996b; 1996c). The concept still needs to be fully
operationalized (Griesbaum 2000). In relation to real-world considera-
tions of human labor, the costs and value of that labor and labor del-
egated to technologies—the subsequent development of a labor theoretic
approach to information retrieval—can be regarded as operationaliza-
tion of selection power.
