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5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 242 of 293

  • 3 - The last 50 years of knowledge organization: a journey through my personal archives

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 45-62

  • Summary

    Abstract

    At the time when the Institute of Information Scientists was launched, well established principles of classification, especially faceted classification, provided an excellent springboard for developments in knowledge organization thereafter. The principles of thesaurus construction and use were worked out during the first two decades of the Institute's existence. Up until the end of the 1980s, most practical systems to exploit any of these vocabularies were held on cards, some of them highly ingenious. The subsequent arrival of the desktop computer, soon followed by the growth of networks providing access to an almost unimaginable quantity and variety of resources, has stimulated evolution of the knowledge organization schemes to exploit the technology available. Anecdotes of events and practical applications of controlled vocabularies illustrate this account of developments over the period.

    Introduction

    The last 50 years is just a blip in the history of knowledge organization, if you take the story back to the Library of Alexandria in the third century BC, with its shelf arrangement designed by Callimachus and probably inspired by Aristotle [1]. However, the period from 1958 onwards has seen a major shift in the focus of interest, and more than one transformation in the practicalities of how we apply the principles.

    A systematic review of developments would be too ambitious for this article. Instead it juxtaposes an account of some milestone advances in the period, together with anecdotes illustrating how it felt to work in those times. ‘Principles and practice’, the byline of the Journal of Information Science, seems a fair summary of the approach.

    The run-up to 1958, or, the rise and rise of Classification

    By the time the Institute of Information Scientists was launched, the theory and pioneering development of classification schemes had seen their heyday.

    The problems of an enumerative scheme such as the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme were well known. (See Berwick Sayers in 1956 [1]: ‘The curious fact remains that more and more libraries throughout the world continue to use it […] somehow it works.

  • 8 - Health informatics: current issues and challenges

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 169-198

  • Summary

    Abstract

    Health informatics concerns the use of information and information and communication technologies within healthcare. Health informatics and information science need to take account of the unique aspects of health and medicine. The development of information systems and electronic records within health needs to consider the information needs and behaviour of all users. The sensitivity of personal health data raises ethical concerns for developing electronic records. E-health initiatives must actively involve users in the design, development, implementation and evaluation, and information science can contribute to understanding the needs and behaviour of user groups. Health informatics could make an important contribution to the ageing society and to reducing the digital divide and health divides within society. There is a need for an appropriate evidence base within health informatics to support future developments, and to ensure health informatics reaches its potential to improve the health and well-being of patients and the public.

    Introduction

    Health care is a complex and information-intensive process in which data concerning the health and medical conditions of individual patients are stored and used for clinical care and management. Additionally, data are aggregated for secondary purposes, such as the management of local health services, the monitoring and surveillance of diseases, and for planning the delivery of health services at regional, national and international levels. Within health care organizations, services and systems, large volumes of data are collected, stored, analysed, transferred, and accessed on a daily basis. In addition to data on individual patients, up-to-date information on how to prevent, diagnose, treat and manage diseases from research is being published and is required by healthcare professionals to provide effective and safe care for patients and the public. Health informatics is a relatively new field that has emerged in the last 20 years and has assumed a growing importance as a discipline. From a Donabedian perspective [1],1 health informatics can be regarded as being concerned with the structures and processes, as well as the outcomes involved in the use of information and information and communications technologies (ICTs) within health. The term ‘e-health’ has been coined to describe the application of these technologies in health and medicine.

  • 7 - From chemical documentation to chemoinformatics: 50 years of chemical information science

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 129-168

  • Summary

    Abstract

    This paper summarizes the historical development of the discipline that is now called ‘chemoinformatics’. It shows how this has evolved, principally as a result of technological developments in chemistry and biology during the past decade, from long-established techniques for the modelling and searching of chemical molecules. A total of 30 papers, the earliest dating back to 1957, are briefly summarized to highlight some of the key publications and to show the development of the discipline.

    Introduction

    Chemistry is, and has been for many years, one of the most information-rich academic disciplines. The very first journal devoted to chemistry was Chemisches Journal, which was published 1778–84 and then, under the name of Chemische Annalen, till 1803 [1]. The growth in the chemical literature during the nineteenth century led to a recognition of the need for comprehensive abstracting and indexing services for the chemical sciences. The principal such service is Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), which was established in 1907 and which acts as the central repository for the world's published chemical (and, increasingly, life-sciences) information. The size of this repository is impressive: at the end of its first year of operations, the CAS database contained ca 12,000 abstracts; by the end of 2006, this had grown to ca 25 million abstracts with ca 1 million being added each year. Most chemical publications will refer to one or more chemical substances. The structures of these substances form a vitally important part of the chemical literature, and one that distinguishes chemistry from many other disciplines. The CAS Registry System was started in 1965 to provide access to substance information, initially registering just small organic and inorganic molecules but now also registering biological sequences [2]. At the end of 1965 there were ca 222,000 substances in the System; by the end of 2006 this had grown to ca 89 million substances, of which ca one-third were small molecules and the remainder biological sequences, with ca 1.5 million being added each year. There are also many additional molecular structures in public databases such as the Beilstein Database [3], and corporate files, in particular those of the major pharmaceutical, agrochemical and biotechnology companies.

  • 16 - How I learned to love the Brits

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 377-383

  • Summary

    As a child I grew up in awe of an English accent. That was not unusual for an American because so many movie stars spoke with an English accent. All during my high school and college days I instinctively believed that anyone who spoke with an Oxford or BBC accent was an authority. And I even held professors and intellectuals who adopted the Harvard version of an English accent in awe. Several of my professors at Columbia University deserved that sort of adulation since they were indeed experts in their respective fields. However, that all changed when I reached Johns Hopkins University in 1951, when I audited a course in statistics with Professor W.G. Cochran. The student who sat next to me was a Brit who spoke with great authority but after a few weeks I began to realize that most of what he said was nonsense.

    For the next few years I had little contact with Englishmen during my stay at Johns Hopkins but my boss at the Welch Medical Library Indexing Project reminded me regularly that he had studied Elizabethan medicine at Oxford.

    My next encounter with the English occurred after leaving the Welch Project. I was impressed by the performance of the editor of the Journal of Documentation, who stood up to the harassment from my then former boss. He was angry at me for submitting a paper to the Journal of Documentation without his permission. So much so that he asked the attorney for the university to write a ‘cease and desist’ letter but the editor did not buckle to his threats. So I can honestly say that my first published paper appeared in an English publication [1]. These stressful events occurred while I was enrolled at Columbia University School of Library Service.

    Of course, even during my two years in Baltimore the British influence on my career was felt strongly. My ‘bible’, so to speak, at that time was the onevolume, 700+page Proceedings of the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Conference [2]. I mentioned the key role played by John Desmond Bernal in that meeting when I spoke about his impact on science policy studies and the field of information science at the recent symposium held at University College in Dublin in September 2007 [3].

  • 14 - Social software: fun and games, or business tools?

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 323-346

  • Summary

    Abstract

    This is the era of social networking, collective intelligence, participation, collaborative creation, and borderless distribution. Every day we are bombarded with more publicity about collaborative environments, news feeds, blogs, wikis, podcasting, webcasting, folksonomies, social bookmarking, social citations, collaborative filtering, recommender systems, media sharing, massive multiplayer online games, virtual worlds, and mashups. This sort of anarchic environment appeals to the digital natives, but which of these so-called ‘Web 2.0’ technologies are going to have a real business impact? This paper addresses the impact that issues such as quality control, security, privacy and bandwidth may have on the implementation of social networking in hide-bound, large organizations.

    Introduction

    Fifty years ago information was stored on punch cards. SDI services appeared about 10 years later and databases were available online from about 1978. In 1988 PCs were in common use and by 1998 the web was being used as a business tool. The web of the 1990s might be thought of as ‘Web 1.0’, for now in 2008 there is much hype about Web 2.0, but what does that mean? Web 2.0 is an umbrella term for a number of new internet services that are not necessarily closely related. Indeed, some people feel that Web 2.0 is not a valid overall title for these technologies. A reductionist view is that of a read–write web and lots of people using it. Tim O'Reilly and colleagues [1] introduced the term in 2004 and later produced a report refining the concept [2].

    O'Reilly defines eight core patterns of Web 2.0:

  • Harnessing collective intelligence

  • Data as the next ‘Intel Inside’

  • Innovation in assembly

  • Rich user experiences

  • Software above the level of a single device

  • Perpetual beta

  • Leveraging [sic] the long tail

  • Lightweight software and business models and cost effective scalability.

    • He expands on these patterns as follows. Harnessing collective intelligence is sometimes described as the core pattern of Web 2.0; it describes architectures of participation [3] that embrace the effective use of network effects and feedback loops to create systems that get better the more that people use them. The second core pattern above is jargon for the fact that information has become as important as, or more important than software, since software itself has become a commodity.

  • 15 - Bibliometrics to webometrics

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 347-376

  • Summary

    Abstract

    Bibliometrics has changed out of all recognition since 1958; becoming established as a field, being taught widely in library and information science schools, and being at the core of a number of science evaluation research groups around the world. This was all made possible by the work of Eugene Garfield and his Science Citation Index. This article reviews the distance that bibliometrics has travelled since 1958 by comparing early bibliometrics with current practice, and by giving an overview of a range of recent developments, such as patent analysis, national research evaluation exercises, visualization techniques, new applications, online citation indexes, and the creation of digital libraries. Webometrics, a modern, fast-growing offshoot of bibliometrics, is reviewed in detail. Finally, future prospects are discussed with regard to both bibliometrics and webometrics.

    Introduction

    The last 50 years have seen two major technological changes in scholarly publishing and two major changes in the way research can be quantitatively analysed, alongside numerous less significant developments. The two publishing changes are the computerization of the printing process, reducing costs significantly and allowing more journals and books to appear in print; and the conversion of the entire publishing cycle (submission of articles, refereeing and publication) to the internet, allowing faster and possibly cheaper communication throughout. Historically, the first major change for the development of quantitative analysis of academic publishing (bibliometrics) was the creation of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, now Thomson Scientific) citation database, which began functioning in 1962 [1, 2] together with associated post-war sociological theory allowing it to be used to assess the impact of scientific work [3]. Since then there has been a continuous increase in the computing power available in universities, which has helped to make increasing numbers of bibliometric analyses possible. The second major development for bibliometrics was the web publishing of an increasingly broad range of research-related documents, from articles to email discussion lists, allowing the creation of a range of new metrics relating to their access and use.

    In this article, the focus is on the measurement of science.

Information Science in Transition
  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009
  • Are we at a turning point in digital information? The expansion of the internet was unprecedented; search engines dealt with it in the only way possible - scan as much as they could and throw it all into an inverted index. But now search engines are beginning to experiment with deep web searching and attention to taxonomies, and the semantic web is demonstrating how much more can be done with a computer if you give it knowledge. What does this mean for the skills and focus of the information science (or sciences) community? Should information designers and information managers work more closely to create computer based information systems for more effective retrieval? Will information science become part of computer science and does the rise of the term informatics demonstrate the convergence of information science and information technology - a convergence that must surely develop in the years to come? Issues and questions such as these are reflected in this monograph, a collection of essays written by some of the most pre-eminent contributors to the discipline. These peer reviewed perspectives capture insights into advances in, and facets of, information science, a profession in transition. With an introduction from Jack Meadows the key papers are: Meeting the challenge, by Brian Vickery; The developing foundations of information science, by David Bawden; The last 50 years of knowledge organization, by Stella G Dextre Clarke; On the history of evaluation in IR, by Stephen Robertson; The information user, by Tom Wilson A; The sociological turn in information science, by Blaise Cronin; From chemical documentation to chemoinformatics, by Peter Willett; Health informatics, by Peter A Bath; Social informatics and sociotechnical research, by Elisabeth Davenport; The evolution of visual information retrieval, by Peter Enser; Information policies, by Elizabeth Orna; Disparity in professional qualifications and progress in information handling, by Barry Mahon; Electronic scholarly publishing and open access, by Charles Oppenheim; Social software: fun and games, or business tools? by Wendy A Warr; and, Bibliometrics to webometrics, by Mike Thelwall. This monograph previously appeared as a special issue of the "Journal of Information Science", published by Sage. Reproduced here as a monograph, this important collection of perspectives on a skill set in transition from a prestigious line-up of authors will now be available to information studies students worldwide and to all those working in the information science field.

  • 12 - The disparity in professional qualifications and progress in information handling: a European perspective

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 283-298

  • Summary

    Abstract

    This paper is a personal view of the development of the role(s) of information professionals in the 50 years since IIS was founded. One of the justifications for the formation of IIS was that the then current professional bodies were not relevant to the needs of those employed in industrial information services. This paper reviews briefly the situation when IIS was formed, from the viewpoint of professional requirements and the developments since. The conclusion is drawn that today's information world, very different from that of 50 years ago, faces similar problems of a lack of suitable qualifications and a confusion in the roles of different actors in the field.

    Introduction

    The suggested brief I received from the Editor of this compilation marking 50 years since the foundation of the Institute of Information Scientists was to cover the European aspects of the IIS, such as they were. I have added the last phrase because I am not certain that any professional aspect of the role of IIS outside the UK was considered at the foundation. I was, at a time shortly after the foundation, a student at the institution where Jason Farradane, a founding father, taught his brand of information science. One did not discuss the politics of professional bodies within the course, one listened to the opinions on certain aspects of the way information systems and services were created, managed, researched and used and took note of the opinions. The more committed of the students actually joined IIS, although there was no pressure to do so.

    I have drawn upon my experiences as a member of the IIS in ‘Europe’ for a number of years, as a resident consultant to the European Commission and subsequently as the Director of the European Society for Information Dissemination in Chemistry (EUSIDIC) and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI), in creating this contribution on certain aspects of the way the information sector has developed over the last 50 years, from the almost exclusive domain of librarianship to a regular topic on the front pages of newspapers, TV and radio, driven by a global availability and distribution system.

  • 13 - Electronic scholarly publishing and Open Access

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 299-322

  • Summary

    Abstract

    A review of recent developments in electronic publishing, with a focus on Open Access (OA) is provided. It describes the two main types of OA, i.e. the ‘gold’ OA journal route and the ‘green’ repository route, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of the two, and the reactions of the publishing industry to these developments. Quality, cost and copyright issues are explored, as well as some of the business models of OA. It is noted that whilst so far there is no evidence that a shift to OA will lead to libraries cancelling subscriptions to toll-access journals, this may happen in the future, and that despite the apparently compelling reasons for authors to move to OA, so far few have shown themselves willing to do so. Conclusions about the future of scholarly publications are drawn.

    Introduction

    The scholarly publishing industry has been greatly affected by the digital era, because ‘the very content of the publishing business is, at the end of the day, a digitizable asset’ [1]. Scholarly publishers realized soon after the development of electronic databases in the early 1970s that ‘the content they acquire is an asset that can be manipulated and stored in digital form’ [1, p. 10] and, led by various experimental projects such as Quartet, a study of electronic journals funded by the British Library in the 1980s, they gradually over the next 30 years made the move from printed format to digital format, seeing it as a cheaper, faster and more effective method of getting their titles to their readers. Thus emerged the electronic journal, with one of the earliest launched in September 1990 (Electronic Journal of Communication). It was an early, free, online, peer-reviewed journal [2].

    In this article, rather than looking back at the last 50 years of the scholarly publishing industry, some recent developments in the electronic scholarly publishing arena are considered. The focus is on the publication of primary scholarly information, i.e. publications that report original research findings (typically peer-reviewed), rather than on electronic abstracting and indexing databases (whose history has been well reviewed in [3, 4] and whose current situation can be gleaned from news items and comments in journals such as Online). There is also an emphasis in this article on electronic journals rather than e-books, as the e-book scholarly monograph market is very small at the moment.

  • Editorial

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp xvii-xx

  • Summary

    It is difficult to be precise about the acorn that gave rise to this oak of an issue, but it seems to have been sown in the Strix Committee,1 which is why that Committee is also the Editorial Board of this special issue. A regret was voiced at one of the meetings of this Committee that so little had been done to formally capture the history of information science in the UK. ‘History is more or less bunk’, as the automobile magnate Henry Ford notoriously said. On the other hand, the Spanish philosopher George Santayana proposed that ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Reflecting on these thoughts last year, it was remembered that 2008 was the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Information Scientists in the UK, and that many of the ideas of the earlier information scientists are not only still valid today, but became the foundations upon which later generations have built. Consequently, feeling that it might be worth the effort to capture some insights into advances made in the last 50 years, a number of pre-eminent information scientists were commissioned to write articles on a range of topics reflecting many facets of information science. This issue does not purport to be a history of information science, nor a comprehensive review of each topic. The authors were given only broad guidelines and encouraged to choose their approach and style within them. All the contributions were read by the Editorial Board and, as is usual, all were refereed by peer professionals.

    Hopes of consulting an Institute archive for this editorial were dented when it was discovered that the bulk of the material had been pulped when the Institute merged with The Library Association. Whatever may remain appears to be stored at two sites, and is not readily accessible. (This is not the only interesting archive to have gone missing: it seems that all the minutes, correspondence and copies of publications of about 40 years of hugely important work of the Classification Research Group was also lost in a separate misadventure).

  • 1 - Fifty years of UK research in information science

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 1-22

  • Summary

    Abstract

    An attempt is made to discern the main research themes in British information science over the past half-century. Within these themes, emphasis is placed on research in the UK that has had some impact on the international information science community. The major factors that have influenced information science research in the UK are also briefly considered.

    Introduction

    Research that clearly falls under the ‘information science’ heading was already being carried out in the UK in the first half of the twentieth century, though the volume of such research was small. It was in the second half of the century that systematic research in this field – and, indeed, the name itself – became fully established, and that the amount of research began to grow rapidly. Today, information science has matured to the stage where even the study of its history has become a legitimate topic for research [1]. A definition of information science acceptable to everyone has always proved difficult to find, from the early days right up to the present. There has, however, been greater agreement on what are the important topics that information scientists should study: most of the topics mentioned in the early days are still regarded as important today, though relative emphases have changed. The development of information science research – as with most science and social science subjects – is reflected reasonably well by the changing nature of the research papers published in its leading journals. So I have used these as my main guide to UK research over the past half century.

    The UK is fortunate in possessing a number of internationally recognized journals that cover library and information science research. These, and especially the Journal of Information Science and the Journal of Documentation, have published a wide variety of research by British information scientists over the past 50 years. The contents of the Journal of Information Science cover all areas of the field and little that is not relevant, but it only started publication in 1979. The Journal of Documentation gives better time coverage, since it goes back beyond the beginning of the period discussed here.

  • Guest Editorial: Meeting the challenge

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp xxi-xxx

  • Summary

    Introduction

    It is a great privilege to be asked to contribute some comments to this special issue of JIS.

    I have enjoyed reading these papers, and seeing how much our field has moved on since the Journal of Documentation attempted a similar historical survey in 1994 [1], just as the internet was ‘taking off ‘.

    My first thoughts were of Jason Farradane, who played such a big part in founding the Institute of Information Scientists in 1958. The IIS has now disappeared within CILIP, and Jason would have been very dismayed at this development.

    I first encountered him at the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference of 1948, where he spoke on ‘the scientific approach to documentation’. In 1952 he was one of the founder members of the Classification Research Group, where he was often defending a minority position, connected to his own ideas of relations between topics, to which Stella Dextre Clarke refers in her paper. He was a serious man, but the more I talked with him, and disagreed with him over many things, the more I liked him.

    In 1955, we were invited together to a meeting of the Aslib Aeronautical Group, at which Cyril Cleverdon spoke about his plans for retrieval evaluation (Cranfield1), which Stephen Robertson discusses in his paper. We spoke about faceted classification, and Cyril challenged us to prepare a scheme for aeronautics, that he could use in his test. With inordinate bravado, we accepted the challenge, and – after much advice from Cyril and his team – managed to produce one. In retrospect – given that it was compiled by two chemists – we were amazed that it performed at all.

    What else was happening around about 1958? There were printed publications of every kind. There were libraries – public, national, government, academic, institutional, industrial – and they were classified and had catalogues. We were much concerned with interlibrary loan, and Donald Urquhart had recently been told to drop all other work and start to plan a new national science lending library for the UK. There were printed indexing and abstracting periodicals, and bibliographies. An industrial firm might have, as well as a technical library, a centre for internal reports, a section dealing with patents, an ‘intelligence’ unit for commercial information, and a correspondence registry. Some of us were playing around with punched or edge-notched cards for ‘mechanized retrieval’.

  • 9 - Social informatics and sociotechnical research – a view from the UK

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 199-220

  • Summary

    Abstract

    This paper explores the connections between two historical lines of research: social informatics in the United States, and sociotechnical studies in the United Kingdom. The author discusses samples of work from three long established UK research sites, at Manchester, Edinburgh and the London School of Economics, to give the reader a sense of sociotechnical work at different historical periods. Though the US and UK traditions share a common interest in the production of technology, and work with complementary concepts and methods, formal links between the two have not been strong for much of the historical period under review. However, there are signs of fusion in the work of a current generation of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Introduction

    Social Informatics is concerned with computerization, or the

    transformation in human activity that follows the implementation, use and adoption of computers in different types of organization [1].

    Historically, separate disciplines have explored this phenomenon from perspectives that focus on different stages of technological development: Human Computer Interaction has handled interface design and ergonomics; Information Systems has addressed analysis, design and implementation; LIS (Library and Information Science) has addressed information retrieval and use; Business and Management have addressed adoption and impact; Operations Research has modelled processes. Social Informatics (SI), in contrast, is transdisciplinary, tracing antecedents and consequences across these different phases of development, and treating technology as an evolving assemblage of interests, activities and artefacts that is shaped over time in local conditions.

    The US tradition

    In the United States, an explicit SI line of thinking was first articulated in the early 1970s by an eclectic group of analysts working at the University of California, Irvine, exploring information systems in local government across the US. Perplexed by the mismatch between accounts from engineering, managerial and operating staff of the impact of ICTs on organization, Kling and Scacchi [2] produced an explanatory frame, the ‘web of computing’, in a seminal paper that was in effect a manifesto for a new line of inquiry.

  • 2 - Smoother pebbles and the shoulders of giants: the developing foundations of information science

  • Edited by Alan Gilchrist
  • Book:
    Information Science in Transition
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2009, pp 23-44

  • Summary

    Abstract

    Some developments in the information science discipline over a period of 30 years are discussed, by selecting topics covered in the early issues of Journal of Information Science, and tracing their influence on subsequent developments, largely though by no means exclusively through JIS papers. Five main themes are covered: the information discipline per se; the foundations of that discipline; the nature of information; relations between discipline and profession; and education for information science. The continuing resonance of the writings of Farradane and Brookes is noted.

    Introduction

    The Journal of Information Science (JIS) was first published in 1979, replacing The Information Scientist (TIS) which – though described as the ‘journal of the Institute of Information Scientists’ – was not generally regarded as a true academic/professional journal. The intervening period of nearly 30 years, a time span commonly taken as equivalent to a ‘generation’, gives the opportunity to consider the issues covered in the early issues of JIS, to set them into the context of the development of the information science discipline over time, and to assess the significance of some of the main contributions and contributors.

    This is done by focusing on some of the articles and editorials published in the first two volumes of JIS, covering the years 1979 and 1980, tracing some of the preceding treatment of the issues, and following later developments, particularly – though not exclusively – through the pages of TIS and JIS. The set of literature cited is selected to show the origins and development of the issues, and is in no way intended to be comprehensive.

    The discussion is focused around five main, albeit overlapping, themes. An initial consideration of the information science discipline itself leads fairly naturally to thoughts on the foundations of the discipline, and that in turn to the central question of the nature of information. There follows a consideration of the relation between discipline and profession, and in particular the role of research, and the closely associated question of the most appropriate form of education for information science. As we shall see, all of these themes are represented in the first issues of JIS, and all have remained ‘live’ topics to the present day.

  • 12 - Making the most of RFID: a case study

  • Martin Palmer
  • Book:
    Making the Most of RFID in Libraries
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 March 2009, pp 113-130

  • Summary

    This chapter presents an example of a long-running RFID-based programme, designed to modernize a large public library service in the UK.

    In the beginning …

    When the library service of Essex County Council in the UK first became interested in RFID in the mid 1990s, it was for a very pragmatic reason. One of its largest libraries – Colchester, in the north-east of the county – had a radio frequency (RF) by-pass security system that had been installed in 1982. Such systems commonly work on one of two frequencies – 10.5 MHz and 8.2MHz – and at the time of the installation at Colchester, there were no regulations about which one should be used by libraries. Consequently, the 8.2 MHz frequency was chosen, as this was different from the 10.5 MHz used by the University of Essex (located nearby) so as to avoid causing problems for users of the two libraries. As the ‘by-pass’ element of the name suggests, the tags used in these systems remain permanently live and so taking a tagged item into an environment where the same frequency is used causes it to trigger the system's alarm.

    A few years later, however, a protocol was devised to regularize the use of these two frequencies, so as to enable differentiation between use in the library environment and in retail. Unfortunately for Essex, the frequency allocated for retail use was the 8.2 MHz used in Colchester library, and as a result many of its customers found themselves setting off security system alarms in shops, simply by having a library book with them.

    This was clearly a major public relations problem, with library users understandably concerned (at the very least) about being subjected to embarrassing and unnecessary searches and interrogations by retail security staff who were simply doing their job. The fact that this situation was nobody's fault – least of all that of the library service – was of little comfort or use in responding to the many resulting complaints.

  • 11 - Installing RFID: project management

  • Martin Palmer
  • Book:
    Making the Most of RFID in Libraries
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 March 2009, pp 103-112

  • Summary

    What needs to happen? In what order? Who's in charge?

    Project management

    Most library services will be part of a larger organization, whether a council, college or business, which will have its own approach to high-level project management, and to which the service will have to conform. This may be one of a variety of approaches, ranging from PRINCE2 to the simpler Critical Path Method, and a detailed description of this level of project management is outside the scope of this book. It is highly likely, however, that some form of Project Initiation Document (PID) will be required, describing in some detail why the project is required, how it will be managed, the costs and the planned outcomes.

    In this way the parent organization can satisfy itself that its rules for capital investment will be met – and so make funds available – as well as minimize risk and ensure that the project is planned, organized and managed correctly. It will be crucial to the success of the project that the service meets all of its parent body's requirements in terms of project sponsorship, management and control, particularly if the release of funds is staged according to milestone targets being achieved.

    Rather than dwelling on these vital but high-level and fairly generic aspects of project management, this chapter concentrates on the more pragmatic elements of putting library RFID into practice and outlines the main areas that will need to be covered.

    Risk management

    Regardless of the higher-level project management approach adopted, it is highly likely that some form of risk management process will be required. This can be comparatively straightforward, but needs to be an honest and robust assessment of the possible obstacles that might lie ahead and of the likelihood of their happening. Table 11.1 shows a simple chart, outlining some possible risks arising from RFID and assessing the level of their possible impact, with proposed plans to address them.

    This approach is simple, but if used rigorously can still be effective. However, this rigour is vital if the process is not to be simply a token gesture.

  • 1 - RFID, libraries and the wider world

  • Martin Palmer
  • Book:
    Making the Most of RFID in Libraries
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 March 2009, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    New to RFID? Curious about how it works? Want to know about RFID in the wider world? This chapter looks at the history and background of RFID technology, and outlines some of its uses in everyday life as well as exploring its main applications in libraries.

    Why RFID and libraries?

    Few, if any, technologies have had as immediate an impact on libraries as that of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). From a standing start in the mid 1990s to a position where an estimated 300 sites worldwide were home to 120 million tagged items by 2005, RFID has spread rapidly around the world's libraries seemingly with little to slow its progress.

    This would be impressive under any circumstances, but it has been achieved against a background in which, even now, most industries still see RFID as an experimental product, whose return on investment is doubtful. The majority of commercial applications remain restricted to limited aspects of supply chain management, with tags used at the consignment or pallet level rather than on individual items.

    At the time of writing, the very few commercial organizations operating RFID at item level on any significant scale are still seen very much as pioneers, with the RFID industry still some distance from even beginning to approach critical mass for item-level adoption.

    Consequently, the claim in 2004 that ‘libraries are much further along with using RFID in a consumer environment than anybody else’ (Lichtenberg, 2004) might have been surprising, but could easily be justified. The main reasons for this are that, for many library managers:

  • ■ RFID is ideally suited to library applications; the need to keep track of thousands of individual items involved in millions of transactions in the most efficient way possible is only one of many applications to which RFID is very well suited.

  • ■ Additionally, however, RFID has a major advantage over other technologies used in libraries for this purpose: the tag has the ability to combine the functions of a barcode (as a unique item identifier) and a security device (able to indicate that an item is being removed from the library without permission). This by itself would be attractive, but, with the added benefits of the ability to read multiple items and to do this virtually simultaneously without the need for line of sight, RFID clearly has a lot to interest any librarian looking to streamline operations.

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