LIS 386.12, Modern Information Retrieval
A comprehensive view of information retrieval through a historical treatment of major
research findings. The literature of the field is reviewed, with the goal of stimulating
basic thinking about the information-retrieval problem.
Note: The term "information retrieval" is used here, as a somewhat arbitrary choice, to encompass what has been given such names as "documentation,""informatics," "information storage, retrieval, and dissemination," and "information science," among others. Information retrieval will be treated as a field closely linked with--yet differing in interesting ways from--library science and librarianship.
The course will explore a number of themes that seem to me important aspects of the history of information retrieval in the last six decades. A list of these themes follows, together with a non-exhaustive list of examples of topics associated with each theme. There may, furthermore, be other themes to be included. The arrangement of these themes is alphabetical. We will discuss their relative importance toward the end of the course. The treatment of these themes during the course will be a mixture of chronological and thematic approaches.
Automated (automatic, machine) abstracting, indexing, and translation; computational linguistics; quantitative linguistics; thesaurus and dictionary development
Antecedents (Library of Congress Classification, Dewey Decimal Classification); Universal Decimal Classification; Ranganathan's Colon Classification; faceted classification
Communications satellites; electronic networks; local area networks (LANs) and wide-area networks (WANs)
Generations of computers (i.e., electromechanical computers, vacuum-tube computers, transistor computers, integrated-circuit computers, personal computers); landmark computers (e.g., ENIAC, Sage, Stretch); interaction of computers and computer-related devices and techniques with information retrieval
Library card catalogs; card sorting (punched, magnetic, optical-coincidence, aperture, etc.); Project MARC (variable-length record structure, repeating fields, System 2000); hierarchical databases (CODASYL); relational databases (Cobb, et al.); full-text management (storage, indexing, searching); online databases (e.g., MEDLINE, OCLC); library automation
Recall and precision; Boolean retrieval; weighted retrieval (non-Boolean, probabilistic, etc.); association mapping; relevance assessment; citation indexing
Edge-notched cards; optical-coincidence (Peek-A-Boo) cards); coordinate indexing (Uniterm, Multiterm)
COSATI study; Humphrey Committee studies
Microforms (microprint, microfilm, microfiche); cards (magnetic, punched, edge-notched); paper tape (e.g., Flexowriter); magnetic strips; magnetic tape (e.g., computers, Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter); high-speed ("core", RAM) memory (e.g., mercury delay line, Williamson tube, ferrite core, magnetic bubbles); secondary storage (e.g., magnetic drum, magnetic disk, early and recent [CD-ROM] optical disks)
None
The course will rely heavily on student participation. There will be a mixture of lectures by the instructor and reports by the students. There will be emphasis on readings in the literature that will form a basis for presentations and discussions in the classroom.
You will be expected to prepare and present an oral report on, and lead a classroom discussion of, at least two topics in the class. For each classroom discussion, you will prepare in advance a brief written summary (1-2 pages).
You will prepare a term paper to be submitted at the end of the semester.
To facilitate communication among the students and the teacher, you must have an email account.
Your grade will be based 15% on your general participation in the classroom discussions, 25% on each of your formal oral reports and leadings of classroom discussions, and 35% on your term paper.
Your written work will be graded not only on content but also on style. By style I mean general appearance, spelling, sentence construction, and the quality of the organization of your material. Specifically, the grade for your written report will be derived from two component letter grades: one grade on the basis of the content, and a second grade on the basis of style. The overall grade for your report will be an adjusted average of these two component grades.
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Last revised 1999 June 4