Understanding Information Retrieval Systems

Management, Types, and Standards

Marcia J. Bates, Marcia J. Bates

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781466551350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Statistics for Business & Economics
• Index: Economics

In order to be effective for their users, information retrieval (IR) systems should be adapted to the specific needs of particular environments. The huge and growing array of types of information retrieval systems in use today is on display in Understanding Information Retrieval Systems: Management, Types, and Standards, which addresses over 20 typ

Part I

General

This section consists of overviews, providing an introduction to key broad-based aspects of information retrieval systems. In Chapter 1, E. Burton Swanson, a senior faculty member of the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, provides the broadest introduction of all, presenting the whole area of “Information systems” as a discipline and as a subset of business processes. He writes of the origins of the field, and on the varieties of information systems studied and developed in the business world. He addresses the major areas of professional knowledge needed by the practitioner of information systems, and surveys the major social issues that pertain to information systems.

Ray R. Larson, of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, homes in on the focus of this volume, that large subset of information systems known as “Information Retrieval Systems” (Chapter 2). As Larson notes in his abstract, information retrieval systems “aim to select relevant material from large collections of information in response to user queries.” The information in IR systems is generally not as formally structured as that in the databases used in business processes, such as payroll and transaction records. Historically, the most common form is, simply, text in database collections, such as book records, article abstracts, and full text, though IR principles have been tested with images, music, and other media as well. Larson, a major researcher in the IR area, describes the components of IR systems, then presents the three classical IR models, Boolean, Vector, and Probabilistic. These models, first elaborated about 50 years ago, formed the original underpinnings of Web-based search engines used today.

Good information retrieval system design should be based on an understanding of the searching done by the people using those systems. Iris Xie, in “Information Searching and Search Models” (Chapter 3), surveys what is known about people using information systems. She reviews the research and theoretical models regarding the way people think about information needs, translate them into search queries, and then actually search on IR systems.

Kalervo Järvelin and Peter Ingwersen, two major European researchers in the information retrieval world, take IR theory to the next level in their chapter on “User-Oriented and Cognitive Models of Information Retrieval” (Chapter 4). Here, they blend an understanding of IR theory with theory about human searching and retrieval, and present several models that encompass the whole user-system complex.

People come into the picture in another way in Elaine G. Toms’ chapter. She is Canada Research Chair in Management Informatics at Dalhousie University. In Chapter 5, “User-Centered Design of Information Systems,” she addresses user-centered design (UCD), the process of designing information systems to work well with their human users. All too often, people have had to adapt to the design of information systems, and it should be the other way around. Needless to say, the human mind does not work the same way as a computer does; we process language differently, we articulate information needs slowly and often prefer to express those needs only in the process of exploring information resources. She describes the techniques that have been developed to structure an information system to support the natural human processes of needing information and searching for it.

We tend to think of technology as neutral and untroubled by ethical and political issues. However, information technology is a part of the information society; the human beings developing and implementing information systems encounter questions with ethical implications all the time in their work lives. Vladimir Zwass, in “Ethical Issues in Information Systems” (Chapter 6), reviews these matters in an interesting way. Throughout the chapter he follows three scenarios that highlight information system ethical issues. He discusses four major ethical areas in particular, privacy, accuracy, property, and access. There is much more to this area than might first be thought.

For those interested in a career in information systems, Paul Gray and Lorne Olfman, of the School of Information Systems and Technology of the Claremont Graduate University, provide an extensive introduction to the nature of information systems education in “Careers and Education in Information Systems” (Chapter 7). They explain the different learning areas and types of courses required in such programs, and provide a very helpful description of the kinds of job titles and career pathways available to people with an information systems background.

1 Information Systems

E. Burton Swanson

CONTENTS

Introduction

Origins

Varieties

Transaction-Processing Systems

Management Information Systems

Decision Support Systems

Group Support Systems

Enterprise Systems

Practice

Application Knowledge

Technology Knowledge

Development Knowledge

Management Knowledge

An Evolving Field

Professional Associations

Publications

Research Firms and Consultancies

Social Issues

Information Rights and Obligations

Property Rights and Obligations

Accountability and Liability

System Quality

Quality of Life

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

INTRODUCTION

An information system is commonly a computer-based system for providing information to an organization to help guide its actions.^[1] The term “information system” is also sometimes used in information science to refer to information retrieval systems based more on documents than on data, an application domain familiar to libraries, in particular. The term is sometimes also used very generally and informally, without reference to either computers or organizations. People sometimes refer to their own personal information systems, for instance. In this entry, we take the organizational perspective, which has its origins in business, but applies to organizations of every kind, including libraries.

In an organization, an information system typically features people working interactively with computers to accomplish a particular task. Human-computer interaction (HCI) enables both people 4and their machine extensions to be informed via the system. Where decisions are routine and highly structured, they may sometimes be automated and relegated to the machine.^[2] Often, the information provided serves to coordinate workers’ specialized but necessarily collective efforts. The varieties of information systems are many, reflecting the diversity of organizations and tasks to be accomplished. A typical large business firm has information systems to support its accounting and finance, operations, supply chain management, sales and marketing, customer service, human resource management, and research and development. But information systems are found everywhere, in organizations of all kinds and sizes, public as well as private.

This entry discusses information systems both as a subject and as a field of study and practice. In the sections to follow, information systems are first described in terms of their: 1) origins; 2) varieties; and 3) practices. As information systems also constitute: 4) an evolving field of study and practice with; 5) attendant social issues, these aspects too are considered.

ORIGINS

Modern information systems emerged with the rise and spread of digital computing in the 1950s, although punched card tabulating equipment was in use for data processing in organizations before then. The stored-program computer itself was initially viewed as a high-powered calculating device, suitable primarily for numerical and other sophisticated analyses. Such “scientific computing” was distinguished from what was termed “electronic data processing” (EDP), which emerged about the same time to support the more prosaic work of business, such as accounting.^[3] In the 1960s, computers came to be designed and marketed specifically for business purposes, eventually displacing the tabulating equipment. Notably, a high-level programming language for business applications, Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL), was also developed, which emphasized data and file structures, and deemphasized the computational features found in FORmula TRANslation (FORTRAN), the language most commonly used in scientific computing. COBOL ultimately became the most widely used programming language for the development of application software for information systems on mainframe computers. As much of this code remains in use, the language persists even today.

Beyond business-oriented application software, the emergence of data base technology in the late 1960s was central to the rapid rise and spread of large-scale information systems among firms. A data base is an organized collection of related data files.^[4] A data base management system (DBMS) is system software that enables data bases to be managed as integrated wholes, where relationships among files are clearly delineated. With a DBMS, data can be defined via a data dictionary and managed separately from the different software which access it. Finally, the articulation of the relational data model as a foundation for data bases spurred the development of relational data bases in the 1970s, which came to dominate the field.^[5] Today, Oracle provides the leading relational data base software for medium to large firms, while Microsoft’s Access is well established among small businesses.

Together, application software and a related data base have come to form the digital content around which any modern information system is now built. Typically, the application software incorporates the “business rules” to be followed, while the data base incorporates the “business facts” that shape the data processing, for instance, in processing a business payroll, or in selling seats to a concert, or in managing the circulation of a library’s holdings, or in almost any other endeavor in which carefully informed organizational actions are routinely taken. While the business facts and data base will typically be specific to the enterprise, the business rules and application software may be either specific or generic, i.e., commonly used, as with accounting systems that incorporate professionally mandated rules and principles. Where the busine...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Editor
• List of Contributors
• Part I: General
• Part II: Management of Information Retrieval Systems
• Part III: Types of Information Retrieval Systems
• Part IV: Standards for Information Retrieval Systems
• Index