Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Volume 34, 1999‐2000

Citation

Chowdhury, G.G. (2002), "Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Volume 34, 1999‐2000", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 348-349. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.5.348.1

The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) was initiated by the American Society for Information Science in 1966. Volume 34 was due to appear in 1999, and indeed on the title page it appears as Volume 34, 1999. However, the publication was delayed because of “an unusual number of very late chapter cancellations”, and because “ARIST staff and some immediate family members experienced an unusual number of illnesses”. Hence Volume 34 has a combined cover date of 1999‐2000, and the copyright date is 2001.

This volume of ARIST contains eight chapters divided in three sections. Section 1 is titled “Planning information systems and services” and contains two chapters: “Cognitive information retrieval” by Peter Ingwersen and “Methodologies and methods for user behavioural research” by Peiling Wang. Section 2, “Basic techniques and technologies”, has chapters by Concepcion Wilson (“Infometrics”); Albert Tabah (“Literature dynamics: studies on growth, diffusion, and dynamics”); Robert Molyneux and Robert Williams, (“Measuring the Internet”); Sally Jo Cunningham, Ian Witten and James Littin (“Applications of machine learning in information retrieval”); and Walter Trybula (“Text mining”). In Section 3 there is one chapter, Donald King and Carol Tenopir’s “Using and reading scholarly literature”.

Each chapter ends with an extensive bibliography. The length of chapters in this volume varies significantly, the minimum being 35 pages and the maximum 141 pages. The volume has an extensive index, covering 47 pages, prepared by Debora Shaw. There is also a cumulative keyword and author index for all 34 volumes of ARIST.

Ingwersen reviews the development and use of the cognitive approach in information science. He covers mostly the period between 1992 and 2000 and divides his discussions in five major sections: the individual cognitive view, the holistic cognitive view, information structures, dimensions of the holistic view, and integration of models. Wang begins her discussions by differentiating between the terms, “methods” and “methodologies”. She concentrates on the research paradigms and methods employed in user behaviour studies. She concludes that the current methodologies and methods need to be strengthened and deepened to study the complexities of user behaviour in complex information environments.

Wilson aims to define informetrics through an historical survey of various related concepts such as bibliometrics, citation analysis, librametrics and scholarly communication studies. This is the longest chapter in this volume and has eight major sections. She concludes that how the field of informetrics defines itself will in future depend in part on the competition for ideas and for researchers from various fields, including statistical/quantitative linguistics, reader studies, software metrics, semiotics and so on. She further predicts that informetrics may absorb these fields to become an area of very general quantitative study, possibly with a new name. Tabah looks at the empirical aspects of literature dynamics; methodological issues such as publication counts and time factor; and practical aspects, such as literature growth and paradigm shift. He concludes that the Internet has brought significant changes and challenges in scholarly communication, and that the agenda for future research in literature dynamics will largely depend on the development of new methodological tools.

Molyneux and Williams survey literature on the measurement of the characteristics of the Internet. They identify four different types of literature: facts and figures; systematic studies; for‐profit studies; and scholarly literature. They identify two areas with a body of mature scholarly literature, retrospective traffic studies and studies of search engines. Cunningham, Witten and Littin focus on the use of machine learning in information retrieval, text categorisation, query formulation and information filtering. Trybula discusses, for the first time as a separate ARIST chapter, text mining. The chapter begins with a very good discussion of the concept of text mining and its relationship with data mining. Works on text mining are been discussed in six major sections: information acquisition, information extraction, text mining, clustering and presentation and software products. Trybula concludes that researchers in text mining should communicate and collaborate with those in information retrieval for further development of the field.

Finally, King and Tenopir cover a popular and often‐discussed topic. They review the events in readership found in the literature, including the reviews of journal use. They conclude that:

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  scientists continue to spend substantial time in reading;

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  publications are the principal channel of communication for scientists;

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  engineers rely more on other channels of communication; and

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  the usefulness of journals has persisted over the years.

Like its predecessors this ARIST volume contains an extremely valuable and authoritative review of literature on selected topics. It should form part of any serious collection in information science and technology.