This paper identifies the need for a new theory of information and develops a mathematical model which distinguishes between: (1) data, as directly observable facts; (2) information, as structured collections of data; and (3) knowledge, as methods of using information. The model is based on the ideas of the binary relational model and uses the…

In a document retrieval, or other pattern matching environment where stored entities (documents) are compared with each other, or with incoming patterns (search requests), it appears that the best indexing (property) space is one where each entity lies as far away from the others as possible; that is, retrieval performance correlates inversely…

The progress made on 65 contracts and grants active during 1968 in the four areas designated by the COSATI subject headings: (1) documentation and information technology, (2) language and linguistics, (3) bionics and (4) information theory are presented. Selected highlights of the program are given in the introductory chapter. This is followed by…

Human individuals, social organizations and societies are alike in that their knowledge of past events is to some extent maintained and brought to bear on their behavior. On the individual level we know quite a bit of how this is accomplished. However, on the social level we know close to nothing. It is not the task of this paper to ascertain the…

Discussion of information and information retrieval focuses on the connection between a calculus defined on channels and information retrieval, and proposes a model of an information retrieval system based on this calculus. Topics include conditionality, situation theory, the flow of information, channel theory, and four principles for an…

Information retrieval (IR) is driven by a process that decides whether a document is about a query. The purpose of this article is to consider "aboutness" from a fundamental, neutral perspective, to shed light on the nature of aboutness by formalizing properties describing it, and to define a set of reasonable properties of aboutness,…

The retrieval decision problem is considered from the viewpoint of a decision theory approach. A threshold rule based on earlier rules for indexing decisions is considered and analyzed for retrieval decisions as a measure of retrieval performance. The threshold rule is seen as a good descriptive design measure of what a reasonable retrieval system…

The purpose of this report is to summarize the content of a series of lectures given at the School of Library Science, State University of New York at Albany. Four summaries are presented. "The Limits of Information Retrieval" discusses the need for a theory of documentation and how it can be derived. "The Structure of Notification" considers in…

Rooted binary trees with weighted nodes are structures encountered in many areas, such as coding theory, searching and sorting, information storage and retrieval. The path length is a meaningful quantity which gives indications about the expected time of a search or the length of a code, for example. In this paper, two sharp bounds for the total…

Textbooks currently in use in courses on information science are listed in this bibliography under the following headings: Information storage and retrieval, Information systems, Information theory, Behavioral sciences, and Basic books. Some of the entries in each category contain evaluative annotations by the author, while others have only the…

Discussion of problems with fuzzy subsets in document retrieval highlights attempts to invent a system of weighted fuzzy queries in which weights correspond to relative importance of each term in query as whole, and use of Kantor's Logic for Retrieval as an alternative to Boolean queries. Six references are cited. (EJS)

Duality is an important topic in informetrics, often less studied in information retrieval where it relates to the unification or symmetry of queries and documents, search formulation versus indexing, and relevant versus retrieved documents. This article examines duality in information retrieval and highlights its connection with hypergeometric…

Reviews characteristics and efficiency of types of information retrieval systems, and concludes that for selective dissemination of information from computer tapes keyword indexing is less efficient than enumerative hierarchical systems which require single hit searching. (AL)

This paper suggests that library and information systems provide access to claims to knowledge rather than to knowledge or information and that such claims to knowledge are in fact claims to truth. The stated purpose of the paper is to explain why the library and information community should adhere to at least soft, if not hard, skepticism with…

THIS REPORT PROVIDES AN ASSESSMENT AND INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERDISCIPLINARY LITERATURE OF THREE APSECTS OF INFORMATION SCIENCE, IN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY FORM. THESE ARE--COMMUNICATION NETWORKS, HUMAN INFORMATION PROCESSES (PRINCIPALLY LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL), AND THE LARGE CYBERNETIC SYSTEMS SUCH AS THE HUMAN BRAIN AND CENTRAL…