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1835 results in Knowledge Management, Databases and Data Mining

Page 79 of 92

  • Preface

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp xxxiii-xxxviii

  • Summary

    Modern information environments are large, dynamic and complex. In the last decade alone there has been an explosion in the amount of information available to be found and the type of tools one can use to find information. In only a few decades we have moved from interacting with relatively small, carefully curated collections of information, such as those at our local university library or public library, to interacting with large volumes of heterogeneous, unclassified and mixed quality data. There are few industries, research disciplines or human activities that do not require information and one's success in these areas often depends directly on one's ability to find useful information.

    Since the development of computerized systems for information access in the late 1950s many interdisciplinary researchers have tried to understand how such systems should be designed, implemented and evaluated. Developing a successful information system requires a solid understanding of users (how users think about, find and make decisions about information), of systems (how information objects should be represented and searched) and of interfaces (how the user and system should interact). However, historically, research about these different aspects has been largely unconnected, especially with regard to userand system-centred research. Much research from the systems field has been largely uninformed by an understanding of information seeking and much research in information seeking lacks a solid perspective of how systems are designed and implemented.

    The bridge between user-centred and system-centred research is known as interactive information retrieval, and this is the term we most often use to describe our research alliances. Interactive information retrieval is a rich area of research that uses research from information behaviour and seeking to inform the design of interactive search systems at interface and system levels. The study of interactive information retrieval is useful not only for researchers who wish to design new systems but for anyone who needs to use, commission or evaluate search systems.

    This book is an overview of the different specialties that comprise interactive information retrieval. We have called it Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval in order to cover all important aspects of information retrieval – behaviour and seeking, interaction and retrieval. It shows how foundational work from studies of human information interactions has led to the design of the systems we use every day to find information.

  • 5 - Information representation

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 77-94

  • Summary

    Introduction

    We build information retrieval systems to help people satisfy their information needs. Although new computer interfaces have increased the ways that users can satisfy their information needs, the predominant interfaces require users to describe their needs with words. Similarly, most retrieval systems represent the items in their collection using words. The words provided by the user are then compared to the words attached to the items in the collection. If the user's words match those of the item, then that item might be what the user wants. If the words do not match, then the item is not returned by the retrieval system. While this explanation is a simplification of matters, the way we represent documents is the first step towards obtaining a high quality retrieval system. We begin by discussing issues in representing text items that pertain to both manual and automatic representation techniques.

    Text representation

    Textual items in our collections could be books, journal articles, web pages, XML documents, emails, word processing files and so forth. These items vary in length and structure and may contain non-text items such as images. In all cases, we will refer to the text items in a collection as documents or items, but it is important to remember that there is a large variety of possible text items.

    Although there are many possible representations of documents, our focus will be on representations that use words or tokens derived from words. The process of deciding which words to use to describe a document is called indexing and the chosen words are called index terms. Sometimes we want to represent documents with more than words and then it makes sense to talk about the use of features, which are more generic than index terms. An example of a non-word feature could be the number of words in a document.

    When we, as humans, manually index documents, we look at the item, read it, and then make decisions ourselves about what index terms to use. When we automatically index, we write computer algorithms to process digital forms of the documents and make the decisions about index terms.

  • 4 - Approaches to investigating information interaction and behaviour

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 61-76

  • Summary

    Information interaction and behaviour was first recognized as an area for research in the early 1960s, and a few studies had been conducted as early as the 1930s (e.g. Akers, 1931). It has expanded greatly with the introduction of computer-based information systems – and particularly with the arrival of the web. The definition of the field is still evolving and its title has gradually changed. Nevertheless, its goal has always been to investigate the behaviour of people when they interact with information (see Chapter 2, ‘Information Behaviour and Seeking’, for a description of the main components of research in human information-seeking behaviour).

    This chapter analyses the approaches that human information behaviour researchers use when they investigate information-seeking behaviour – how people look for information when they use electronic information systems. The development of these approaches followed those in other social sciences, if with some delay. While human information behaviour studies in the first two decades were guided by the same approach (materialized predominantly through large-scale questionnaires), later various approaches were used. These are not isolated from one another, but connected through several dimensions that point to their commonalities and differences.

    In this chapter I explain some of these dimensions and discuss the contributions of human information behaviour studies to research and design. The dimensions I consider are philosophical stance, research setting, level of control, instruments for data collection, level of generalization, nature of data and analysis, and method of reasoning.

    The philosophical stance

    All researchers have a philosophical stance that guides their work, whether or from one project to another. A researcher's stance shapes the decisions about what research questions to investigate and these questions guide the study design, including the approach to be applied. Human information behaviour research has been directed by several stances and discussing all of them requires a book of its own. Here I adapt a simplistic dichotomy – that between the positivist and the non-positivist stances. The positivist stance was the first to influence human information behaviour and information retrieval research. Information retrieval evaluation investigations have been guided only by positivism – which has often been named ‘the scientific method’ – and is still the dominant stance in human information behaviour research.

  • Foreword

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp xxv-xxxii

  • Summary

    The job of the search user interface is to aid users in the expression of their information needs, in the formulation of their queries, in the understanding of their search results, and in keeping track of the progress of their information seeking efforts.

    (Marti Hearst, Search User Interfaces, Cambridge University Press, 2009)

    Search user interfaces are at the centre of interactive information seeking and retrieval. Yes, search user interfaces include the jobs that the quotation above enumerates and even more. While this book is not only about interfaces, it is also about those jobs and even more about that more.

    This book reports on the recent advances on interaction topics reflected in its title. However, the historic roots of these topics go deep – and like all roots they are entangled and not that visible. But we can learn from them in terms of problems addressed and solutions attempted. Research on information-seeking behaviour, under various names and orientations, goes back many decades. So let us start with a bit of general history of the topics covered by the book; more specific history is presented in Chapter 1.

    Activities associated with what we now call information retrieval existed and were practised long before Calvin Mooers (1919–1994, physicist and information retrieval pioneer) coined the term information retrieval in 1951. They were rooted in libraries but left them to become part of technology.

    Mooers (1951) defined information retrieval as follows:

    Information retrieval is … the finding or discovery process with respect to stored information … useful to [a user]. Information retrieval embraces the intellectual aspects of the description of information and its specification for search, and also whatever systems, techniques, or machines that are employed to carry out the operation.

    Not surprisingly, interaction is not mentioned in this definition – at the time the concept and term (in its present denotation and connotation) did not exist, even though interaction was practised from the start using ‘whatever systems, techniques, or machines’ were available. Even ‘intellectual aspects … for search’ imply interaction. As it turned out, the ‘systems, techniques or machines’ on the one hand and ‘intellectual aspects’ on the other became two major branches of problem orientation and inspiration for information retrieval research and practice.

  • 9 - Interactive techniques

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 171-188

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Information seeking is a core human life activity, driven by information needs, which are situation-driven phenomena emerging from people's desire to tackle a problem (Belkin, Oddy and Brooks, 1982a, 1982b) or address an incompleteness (Mackay, 1960; Belkin, 1980; Dervin, 1983). Search systems provide a means for people to find the information they seek rapidly. Interaction between searchers and these systems is important for effective information retrieval, whose interaction is primarily manifested in mainstream search systems, such as web search engines, through multi-turn queries comprising dialogue (input by the user) and search results (output by the system). Query formulation can be an intellectually demanding process that has a direct impact on the relevancy of search results (Croft and Thompson, 1987). When searchers are unfamiliar with the collection makeup and retrieval environment or information needs are vague or complex, query formulation challenges are magnified (Furnas et al., 1987; Salton and Buckley, 1990; Spink, Greisdorf and Bateman, 1998). To help users, search systems can provide support beyond processing rudimentary queries and providing search results. Systems can help their users determine the relevant items, create effective search queries, and make search decisions such as determining how best to use the query. Among other benefits, these techniques can help searchers better specify well defined information needs or further develop their previously ill-defined needs. In this chapter we describe techniques that have emerged from the information retrieval research community in recent decades to support search interaction. We begin with a brief description of how interaction is traditionally modeled in information-seeking research.

    Modeling information seeking

    Information retrieval traditionally conforms to a query-centric model of information seeking known as specified searching, where the query conceived by a searcher and presented to the system is assumed to specify the information that the searcher is trying to locate (Oddy, 1977). This model assumes that the information being sought exists in the document collection being searched and that the goal of the search process is to retrieve that information. Although this paradigm permits query refinement, information-seeking behavior is constrained to analytical search strategies that yield precise results with minimal need for result set examination and item comparison (Marchionini, 2006b). Such information-seeking scenarios would benefit from support for lookup searches and other specialized search support.

  • 2 - Information behavior and seeking

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 15-42

  • Summary

    Introduction

    ‘Information behavior’ is currently a preferred term to describe the many ways in which humans interact with information, in particular, the ways in which people seek and utilize information.

    Marcia J. Bates (2010, 2381)

    A substantial body of literature exists on empirical studies and theoretical discussions of information behavior. Taking a literary-warrant approach, we note that research in human information behavior has investigated a broad range of topics: information needs, information seeking, looking for information, searching information retrieval systems, browsing information resources, finding inform ation, relevance judgment, information use, information generation, infor - mation communication, information sharing, information transfer, personal information management, accidental information encountering, serendipitous information, information avoidance, affect associated with information, information habit, information style, and any information-related human behavior.

    As a preferred term, ‘information behavior’ has its evolutionary path. In the early 19th century, studies about information use focused on usage of information resources and channels or systems (e.g. journals, interpersonal communications and libraries). After World War 2, the rapid development in science and technology led to the advent of online information retrieval systems, which marked a new era of information storage, dissemination and retrieval. User studies in the late 1960s and 1970s expanded from investigating information use to observing information need, for example by scientists and engineers in their work environments. It was also during this period that much debate was devoted to the concept of relevance as it was a key element for two traditional measures of information retrieval performance: recall (the percentage of the relevant documents being retrieved) and precision (the percentage of the retrieved documents that are relevant). In the late 1970s and 1980s, the information world witnessed the transition from card catalogs and print indexes and abstracts to online public access catalogs (OPACs) and various commercial online information retrieval services.

    The term ‘information seeking’ occurred in the literature as a short form for information need, seeking and use. The first International Conference on Information Seeking in Context (ISIC), held in Finland in 1996, was significant as the meaning of context was debated; a substantial number of papers reported on research of real users taking qualitative, naturalistic or multiple approaches; and research findings included not only purposive, active information-seeking behavior such as work-task-related behavior, but also unintentional, passive information behavior such as accidental information encountering and information avoidance.

  • 11 - Recommendation, collaboration and social search

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 205-220

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter considers the social component of interactive information retrieval: what is the role of other people in searching and browsing? For simplicity we begin by considering situations without computers. After all, you can interactively retrieve information without a computer; you just have to interact with someone or something else. Such an analysis can then help us think about the new forms of collaborative interactions that extend our conceptions of information search, made possible by the growth of networked ubiquitous computing technology.

    Information searching and browsing have often been conceptualized as solitary activities; however, they always have a social component. We may talk about ‘the’ searcher or ‘the’ user of a database or information resource. Our focus may be on individual uses and our research may look at individual users. Our experiments may be designed to observe the behaviors of individual subjects. Our models and theories derived from our empirical analyses may focus substantially or exclusively on an individual's evolving goals, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions. Nevertheless there are always social aspects of information seeking and use present, both implicitly and explicitly.

    We start by summarizing some of the history of information access with an emphasis on social and collaborative interactions. Then we look at the nature of recommendations, social search and interfaces to support collaboration between information seekers. Following this we consider how the design of interactive information systems is influenced by social elements.

    Background

    The history of organized information is, necessarily, one of social relationships. The organizers structured documents to ease retrieval, possibly for themselves in the first instance, but then for users who wished to access the collection. Personal libraries, organizational libraries, and then public libraries provided access to information resources hundreds of years before computers arrived. These libraries contained, or indeed embodied, two main social relationships between the librarians and the users. The simplest relationship was a dialogue between the information seeker and the librarian, which has evolved into the reference interview. The other relationship was indirect, via the structure of the collection; where the librarians arranged the items to facilitate retrieval. These arrangements have evolved into classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal Classification. As the literary record grew through books and journals the connections between published works, authors, readers and information seekers have become ever more complex.

  • 6 - Access models

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 95-112

  • Summary

    Introduction

    From the perspective of the user of an information retrieval system, information retrieval involves a number of compromises, many of which have been discussed elsewhere in this book. The user's information need may be poorly con - ceptualized, and may be poorly expressed in search or query terms. While recognizing the problems inherent in producing a query that is representative of the user's information need, in this chapter we will take the query as the starting point, and look at the means by which the subsequent processing is carried out – at what goes on ‘under the hood’ once the user releases a query to the system.

    For many users of information systems, the process by which their query is compared to millions of documents, resulting in a list in some ranked order, is a mystery. The search engine is a black box, and the processes that occur within it are not at all transparent to the user. This is especially true in the web environment, where the techniques used by search engines are proprietary, and very little published information on retrieval methods is available. This lack of transparency arises in part because of the commercial advantage attached to providing a better search engine (and attracting more users and more advertising revenues), and in part because search engine companies wish to protect themselves against unscrupulous information providers who may use detailed knowledge about the retrieval algorithms to design web pages to receive a high ranking from the search engine, whether or not they are actually relevant to a particular query. A discussion of the problems of information retrieval on the web is provided in Chapter 10, ‘Web Retrieval, Ranking and Personalization’.

    However, despite the lack of transparency about the details of specific search engines, the general principles underlying the techniques used by retrieval engines are well known. These techniques are publicized in the research literature as well as in many textbooks (see, for example, Manning, Raghavan and Schutze, 2008; Croft, Metzler and Strohman, 2009).

Understanding Sponsored Search
  • Core Elements of Keyword Advertising
  • Jim Jansen
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    25 July 2011
  • This book addresses the underlying foundational elements, both theoretical and methodological, of sponsored search. As such, the contents are less affected by the ever-changing implementation aspects of technology. Rather than focusing on the how, this book examines what causes the how. Why do certain keywords work, while others do not? Why does that ad work well, when others that are similar do not? Why does a key phrase cost a given amount? Why do we measure what we do in keyword advertising? This book speaks to that curiosity to understand why we do what we do in sponsored search. The content flows through the major components of any sponsored search effort, regardless of the underlying technology or client or product. The book addresses keywords, ads, consumers, pricing, competitors, analytics, branding, marketing and advertising, integrating these separate components into an incorporated whole. The focus is on the critical elements, with ample illustrations and with enough detail to lead the interested reader to further inquiry.

Evaluating Learning Algorithms
  • A Classification Perspective
  • Nathalie Japkowicz, Mohak Shah
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    17 January 2011
  • The field of machine learning has matured to the point where many sophisticated learning approaches can be applied to practical applications. Thus it is of critical importance that researchers have the proper tools to evaluate learning approaches and understand the underlying issues. This book examines various aspects of the evaluation process with an emphasis on classification algorithms. The authors describe several techniques for classifier performance assessment, error estimation and resampling, obtaining statistical significance as well as selecting appropriate domains for evaluation. They also present a unified evaluation framework and highlight how different components of evaluation are both significantly interrelated and interdependent. The techniques presented in the book are illustrated using R and WEKA, facilitating better practical insight as well as implementation. Aimed at researchers in the theory and applications of machine learning, this book offers a solid basis for conducting performance evaluations of algorithms in practical settings.

  • 1 - Encountering on the road to Serendip? Browsing in new information environments

  • Edited by Allen Foster, Pauline Rafferty
  • Book:
    Innovations in Information Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2011, pp 1-22

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter considers the continuing relevance of the ideas of browsing, serendipity, information encountering and literature discovery in the context of the information retrieval (IR) environment of 2010, though its scope extends to the ideas in the broader contexts of information seeking and informationrelated behaviour. It is based around a selective review of the literature since 1990 and reflection and speculation on the results. The central focus is on questions of how the concept of browsing, serendipity and related ideas have changed in the new IR environment of the web and whether, indeed, they are still meaningful concepts.

    By the early 1990s, computerized retrieval was well established in practice and much investigated academically, but the internet was not widely used and the web was not developed. Browsing was a ubiquitous way of finding information, regarded as reasonably well understood. The literature on browsing, serendipity, creative use of information and associated topics up to that point has been thoroughly reviewed (Bawden, 1993a; Chang and Rice, 1993) and this older material will not be systematically covered in this chapter. More recent reviews and literature summaries are provided by Rice, McCreadie and Chang (2001), Foster and Ford (2003), Bates (2007), McBirnie (2008), Anderson (2010), Makri and Warwick (2010), Nutefall and Ryder (2010) and Case (2007), who analyses the concept of browsing and gives numerous examples of studies where its importance as a behaviour has been shown.

    Browsing, as a concept, did not necessarily have a positive image among information specialists. I can recall being introduced, while studying for my master's degree, to the views of some senior practitioners who held that if users of a library were found to be browsing to any great extent, then this was a reflection on the library and its staff.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Allen Foster, Pauline Rafferty
  • Book:
    Innovations in Information Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2011, pp xv-xviii

  • Summary

    This is a book about research fronts in information retrieval and information organizations. As teachers of information retrieval and researchers in the field, we felt that a book specifically intended to inform and inspire Master's-level students who might be looking to develop their dissertation topics, or indeed to develop PhD proposals, would be useful and interesting We thought that this should be an edited and peer-reviewed book in which academics in information retrieval would be invited to write about the issues and topics that they think are of current interest and that they find engaging. This book, then, is intended to complement the information retrieval textbooks that are already in the market. The focus of this book is to introduce students to the broader information retrieval debates, theories and issues. To this end, contributors have been encouraged to highlight the ‘hot’ research ideas in their specialist area.

    For many years the theory and practice of knowledge organization remained the preserve of information scientists and library professionals. The ubiquity and accessibility of the internet has changed this: no longer the sole concern of the library and information science (LIS) community, knowledge organization has caught the interest of computer scientists, semantic web developers and know - ledge managers working in a wide range of organizations involved in the creation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information, in particular, digital information. While traditional subject-oriented knowledge organization tools have been created and developed from within scholarly domains, so that the underlying concern has been to map ‘knowledge’ for academic purposes (e.g. DDC, LC, A&AT, Iconclass), contemporary subject-oriented knowledge organiz - ation tools are often driven by commercial, process and product-driven purposes.

    The advent of new information retrieval technologies and approaches to storage and retrieval provides communities with previously unheard-of opportunities for mass documentation, digitization and the recording of cultural artefacts. A number of the contributors to this book focus in a variety of ways on issues relating to mass information retrieval in a digital age. In generating information retrieval for the public to contribute, describe and share, particular issues arise as to how shared meanings, quality of interpretation, indexing and tagging are accomplished. Related topics, such as generic categorization, semantic interoperability, dialogic semiotic interaction, once perhaps considered the preserve of other disciplines (linguistics, psychology, computer science), are increasingly of interest to the retrieval theorist and practitioner.

  • Foreword

  • Edited by Allen Foster, Pauline Rafferty
  • Book:
    Innovations in Information Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2011, pp xiii-xiv

  • Summary

    In a dynamic and information-rich world information retrieval (IR) research and developments are the order of the day, as can be seen from numerous books and articles that are appearing. Scholars and practitioners may note some of these in passing. Serious scholars and researchers may take a closer look. When one is overwhelmed with information and other responsibilities it is, however, often difficult to note the finer nuances and shifts in a field – apart from carrying out systematic literature reviews. It is also difficult to find time to reflect and to notice gaps in research and practice in the field.

    Innovations in Information Retrieval: perspectives for theory and practice is thus a very timely reminder of the importance of the field and the impact of IR research and theory on information users and their productivity, creativity, innovation, learning and communication. It also serves as an alert to both scholars and practitioners on the issues that might easily slip by without being noticed. The contributing authors bring many issues of importance for theory and practice to the fore. My thoughts when reading the chapter manuscripts were: I need to read this a few more times to make sure I pick up all the interesting ideas for further research; I wonder what my postgraduate students doing a course on IR, information seeking and information organization would note; and I really hope that decision-makers in libraries and information services will carefully study the text to spot challenges for practice. Before elaborating on these, a few words on some of the more obvious contributions of Innovations in Information Retrieval:

  • • An expert team in the IR, information organization and information seeking fields is contributing. The diversity of contributions, ranging from serendipity and creativity to music and fiction retrieval, searching on the web, folksonomies and social tagging, and semantic navigation, brings to the front the interrelated nature of the field and how different issues impact on each other. For the scholarly reader and student it might be a good exercise to work through the chapters and see how each chapter can link to the arguments on serendipity and creativity. How can we read between the lines and come up with new ideas and stimulation for the field?

  • 5 - Folksonomies, social tagging and information retrieval

  • Edited by Allen Foster, Pauline Rafferty
  • Book:
    Innovations in Information Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2011, pp 85-116

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Services in Web 2.0 generate a large quantity of information, distributed over a range of resources (e.g. photos, URLs, videos) and integrated into different platforms (e.g. social bookmarking systems, sharing platforms (Peters, 2009). To adequately use this mass of information and to extract it from the platforms, users must be equipped with suitable tools and knowledge. After all, the best information is useless if users cannot find it: ‘The model of information consumption relies on the information being found’ (Vander Wal, 2004). In Web 2.0, the retrieval component has been established through so-called folksonomies (Vander Wal, 2005a), which are considered as several combinations of an information resource, one or more freely chosen keywords (‘tags’) and a user. Web 2.0 services that use folksonomies as an indexing and retrieval tool are defined as ‘collaborative information services’ because they allow for the collaborative creation of a public database that is accessible to all users (registered, where necessary) via the tags of the folksonomy (Ding et al., 2009; Heymann, Paepcke and Garcia-Molina, 2010).

    Folksonomies in information retrieval serve mainly to provide access to information resources for all users – where the initial motivation for tagging is often of a personal nature:

    In my mind, at least initially, it really has do with retaining information that you, I, or anyone else has found and organizing it in a way so that people can re-find that information at some later date. Tagging bookmarks is really another way of trying to keep source […] once found on the Internet permanently found.

    (Gordon-Murnane, 2006, 28)

    Metadata in the form of tags, titles or descriptions are especially invaluable for the retrieval of non-textual information resources such as images or videos because the state of the art of search engine technology allows only for textual research, meaning that these resources would otherwise be irretrievable (Dye, 2006). In these instances, it is also important for the retrievability of resources to be guaranteed by a broad-access vocabulary, and this is where folksonomy can provide excellent service (Goodrum and Spink, 2001, 296). Because of their strong user-orientedness and broad-access vocabulary, folksonomies can also facilitate the retrieval of relevant information in company intranets or in ‘enterprise search’ (Schillerwein, 2008).

  • 3 - Approaches to fiction retrieval research: from theory to practice?

  • Edited by Allen Foster, Pauline Rafferty
  • Book:
    Innovations in Information Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2011, pp 49-68

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter considers fiction retrieval research and initiatives, providing an overview of some of the approaches that have been developed. In particular, it describes two recent approaches to fiction retrieval that have made use of theoretical concepts drawn from literary theory.

    Fiction is an interesting information domain because it includes documents that serve two purposes, which are reading for pleasure and scholarly study (Beghtol, 1994, 3), but fiction retrieval has not always focused on both aspects. In the 19th century, the approach was to treat fiction from a knowledge perspective within general classification schemes. The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) and the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) contain classes for literature, with the main subdivision in each case being the language in which it is written. Further subdivision is possible based on literary form, historical period or the works of an individual author (Riesthuis, 1997).

    It may be that there is a relationship between the development of literary studies as academic scholarship and approaches to fiction retrieval in libraries. In the UK, for example, Literary Studies as an academic discipline developed in the 19th century, institutionalized in the Mechanics’ Institutes, workingmen's colleges and extension lecturing circuits before its acceptance in the universities (Eagleton, 1996, 23). In its early days in the academy, English Studies was considered to be ‘an upstart, amateurish affair as academic subjects went, hardly able to compete on equal terms with the rigours of Greats or philology’ (Eagleton, 1996, 25). It is a relatively new academic discipline, although its research methods and interpretative approaches have a much longer history, at least since Aristotle's Poetics. We know that during the late 19th and early 20th centuries public libraries in England were still capping the number of novels that patrons were able to borrow, which suggests some nervousness about the role of the library and the librarian. There seemed to be concern, evidenced in the letters pages of the Library Association journal of the time, about whether libraries should be encouraging the reading of novels and the consumption of fiction for pleasure alone or whether they should be concerned with the intellectual ‘improvement’ of their patrons by encouraging the reading of serious, knowledge-based literature (Barr and Sturges, 1992).

Page 79 of 92