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A web-based tool for making and sharing research designed for authors, curators, and editors in the humanities is described, editorsnotes.org. Notes are a varied genre not limited to annotations. The data for the tool is modeled as three kinds of records: Notes created; Documents cited; and Topics, headings for names and subjects. Structured records are needed forinteroperability and sharing. Open access, sustainability issues, and how working notes can complement other infrastructure are discussed in a status report.

Scholarly annotated editions of historically important texts constitute an important foundation for understanding history and culture. Their preparation requires a sustained investment of highly specialized expertise and generates a rich corpus of research notes that are mostly not included in the eventual published volumes. Ordinarily these research resources are simply discarded. We examine the challenge of preserving working notes so that they could become the basis for future research and describe a shared website editornotes.org. © 2014 Society for Imaging Science and Technology.

Controlled vocabularies may aid coordination within systems while simultaneously hindering coordination across them (Lancaster 1986, 181). Many solutions to this quandary have been proposed, but most of these assume a context in which there is a strong central organization able to impose a coordinating superstructure. In decentralized contexts, exhaustive full-text indexing has largely supplanted attempts to achieve cross-system compatibility of controlled vocabularies. We report on an approach to achieving some degree of cross-system compatibility of controlled vocabularies in a context where 1) there is no centralized control, and 2) full-text indexing alone is inadequate for bringing together related documents.

The field of LIS is beset by recurrent debates as to its disciplinary status. For decades, the interdisciplinary nature of information science has been upheld without much proof from the ground. But if LIS is not an interdiscipline, is it then a meta-, a trans-a pluri-, a multi-or simply a discipline? The different proposals for qualifying the nature of LIS or for delineating its frontiers suggest that its fundamental nature remains unclear for its community. But is LIS alone in this dilemma and does it really matter? Does it stop the field from progressing?

Simple Summary: The MGMT gene is responsible for repairing DNA damage, including as a result of chemotherapy, and, therefore, antagonizes its effects. If the MGMT gene is 'silenced', there is defective DNA repair leading to increased chemotherapy-related tumor cell death. MGMT gene silencing can occur through a process called 'promoter methylation'. Specifically, the measurement of MGMT promoter methylation (MGMTp testing) has proven to be a robust way to predict which brain tumor patients will respond to chemotherapy. However, prior to treatment, brain tumors can already contain variably sized areas of dead tumor termed 'necrosis'. Necrosis has traditionally been assumed to reduce the reliability of MGMTp testing but has not been previously investigated. In this study, we demonstrate that necrosis has no material effect on the results of MGMTp testing, thus allowing for the inclusion of a broader range of brain tumor samples for future analysis. (1) Background: MGMT (O-6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase) promoter methylation remains an important predictive biomarker in high-grade gliomas (HGGs). The influence of necrosis on the fidelity of MGMT promoter (MGMTp) hypermethylation testing is currently unknown. Therefore, our study aims to evaluate the effect of varying degrees of necrosis on MGMTp status, as determined by pyrosequencing, in a series of primary and recurrent HGGs; (2) Methods: Within each case, the most viable blocks (assigned as 'true' MGMTp status) and the most necrotic block were determined by histopathology review. MGMTp status was determined by pyrosequencing. Comparisons of MGMTp status were made between the most viable and most necrotic blocks. (3) Results: 163 samples from 64 patients with HGGs were analyzed. MGMTp status was maintained in 84.6% of primary and 78.3% of recurrent HGGs between the most viable and necrotic blocks. A threshold of ≥60% tumor cellularity was established at which MGMTp status was unaltered, irrespective of the degree of necrosis. (4) Conclusions: MGMTp methylation status, as determined by pyrosequencing, does not appear to be influenced by necrosis in the majority of cases at a cellularity of at least 60%. Further investigation into the role of intratumoral heterogeneity on MGMTp status will increase our understanding of this predictive marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W. Boyd Rayward is best known as the biographer of Paul Otlet and as a historian of documentation, but he has also always been concerned with contemporary services and with the nature of information science. Less well known and certainly less well documented is his exceptional indirect influence through correspondence, encouragement, conferences, and the building of informal networks. We provide an informal account of some of Rayward's influence during the past twenty-five years in building a more complete and historically informed understanding of information science. © 2014 The Board of Trustees.

The paper aims to explain the character and causes of obsolescence in assigned subject descriptors. The paper takes the form of a conceptual analysis with examples and reference to existing literature. Subject description comes in two forms: assigning the name or code of a subject to a document and assigning a document to a named subject category. Each method associates a document with the name of a subject. This naming activity is the site of tensions between the procedural need of information systems for stable records and the inherent multiplicity and instability of linguistic expressions. As languages change, previously assigned subject descriptions become obsolescent. The issues, tensions, and compromises involved are introduced. Drawing on the work of Robert Fairthorne and others, an explanation of the unavoidable obsolescence of assigned subject headings is presented. The discussion relates to libraries, but the same issues arise in any context in which subject description is expected to remain useful for an extended period of time. © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Bibliography of publications written by Lodewyk Bendikson (1875-1953).

The author provides an examination of how ideas about place and space have been used in thinking about the organization of knowledge. The spatial analogies of Paul Otlet (1868-1944) in relation to his overall vision are traditional and conventional. Notions of space, place, position, location, and movement are frequent in the work of other leading innovators (Martin Schrettinger, Melvil Dewey, Wilhelm Ostwald, Emanuel Goldberg, and Suzanne Briet) concerning specific practical aspects of knowledge organization. Otlet's spatial imagery is more original and more ingenious when applied to technical problems compared to his overall vision. © 2012 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois.

During the 20th century there was a strong desire to develop an information science from librarianship, bibliography, and documentation and in 1968 the American Documentation Institute changed its name to the American Society for Information Science. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, departments of (library and) information science had turned instead towards the social sciences. These programs address a variety of important topics, but they have been less successful in providing a coherent explanation of the nature and scope of the field. Progress can be made towards a coherent, unified view of the roles of archives, libraries, museums, online information services, and related organizations if they are treated as information-providing services. However, such an approach seems significantly incomplete on ordinary understandings of the providing of information. Instead of asking what information science is or what we might wish it to become, we ask instead what kind of field it can be given our assumptions about it. We approach the question by examining some keywords: science, information, knowledge, and interdisciplinary. We conclude that if information science is concerned with what people know, then it is a form of cultural engagement, and at most, a science of the artificial. © 2011 ASIS&T.

Abstract: Editor's Summary A critical element in the products of research projects is the data set, largely treated as a marginal appendage to the written record. With the requirement for data management plans in grant proposals to the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, the issue of managing research data sets is gaining attention. Sharing primary data enables a greater return on the original investment, expanded discovery and fertilization of ideas across disciplines. The major impediment is lack of an infrastructure to archive non‐textual data sets, in addition to hurdles including locating data, deterioration, format standardization, permission for use and suitability. It is essential that institutional policies recognize data sets as a key product of intellectual work worthy of inclusion in a bibliography. This must be followed by action to promote their preservation, metadata enrichment, cross‐lingual interoperability, geographic and temporal coding and data provenance and to contend with changes over time.

Editor's Note: Occasionally in studying HCI history, I have stumbled upon large topics that I was unaware existed. Perhaps the most surprising has been the development of advanced information technologies, which preceded computers. In some ways, the constraints imposed by those technologies forced deeper thinking about information itself. In this column, Berkeley Professor Emeritus Michael Buckland describes the work of four dedicated creative pioneers.-Jonathan Grudin. © 2009 ACM.

* Context.--Three-dimensional (3D) photogrammetry is a method of image-based modeling in which data points in digital images, taken from offset viewpoints, are analyzed to generate a 3D model. This modeling technique has been widely used in the context of geomorphology and artificial imagery, but has yet to be used within the realm of anatomic pathology.Objective.--To describe the application of a 3D photogrammetry system capable of producing high-quality 3D digital models and its uses in routine surgical pathology practice as well as medical education.Design.--We modeled specimens received in the 2 participating laboratories. The capture and photogrammetry process was automated using user control software, a digital single-lens reflex camera, and digital turntable, to generate a 3D model with the output in a PDF file.Results.--The entity demonstrated in each specimen was well demarcated and easily identified. Adjacent normal tissue could also be easily distinguished. Colors were preserved. The concave shapes of any cystic structures or normal convex rounded structures were discernable. Surgically important regions were identifiable.Conclusions.--Macroscopic 3D modeling of specimens can be achieved through Structure-From-Motion photogrammetry technology and can be applied quickly and easily in routine laboratory practice. There are numerous advantages to the use of 3D photogrammetry in pathology, including improved clinicopathologic correlation for the surgeon and enhanced medical education, revolutionizing the digital pathology museum with virtual reality environments and 3D-printing specimen models.(Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2018;142:1415-1420; doi: 10.5858/arpa.2017-0145-OA), Three-dimensional (3D) photogrammetry is a method of image-based modeling in which data points in digital images, taken from offset viewpoints, are analyzed to generate a 3D model. This technique has [...]

Schools of Documentation, Librarianship, and Information Management have inherited multiple traditions: bibliography, documentation, librarianship, information retrieval, computing, informetrics, communications, archives, information systems, publishing, and more. We are concerned with documents (books, records, data, speech, symbolic objects) and with the creation, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge in society. The scope is large if we consider who uses documents and why. We deal with very complex matters: human understanding and belief, information technology, and social policies. There are intellectual problems and practical problems of social significance and complexity. New technologies (writing, printing, digitization, telecommunications) constitute new means, not new ends. We can and should rethink and redesign everything as technology changes what is feasible. These schools have focused on a small number of students.Professional education discourages interest in the nature of the field. The ideal professional program would be within a broader concern with the production, distribution, and utilization of knowledge. It would be scholarly and scientific and critical, drawing on formal techniques (algorithms) and social sciences (cultural anthropology, policy analysis sociology), and also humanities (rhetoric, semantics, epistemology). Our importance comes from the importance of our problems and the relevance of our instruction, research and public service to those problems.

This work represents a confluence of three lines of research: The OASIS program of studies in adaptive searching, led by Michael Buckland, which from 1990 has developed prototypes for supporting improved use of existing metadata [Buckland et al. 1992, and http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/oasis/]; Ray Larson's development of "classification clustering" to create entry vocabulary modules for the Library of Congress Classification in CHESHIRE, a next-generation online catalog and full-text information retrieval system using advanced IR techniques [http://cheshire.lib.berkeley.edu/]; and Fredric Gey's research and development on access to numeric databases and use of probabilistic retrieval techniques in TREC [http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/gey.html]. The rapid increase in network-accessible repositories increases opportunities for searching. Unfamiliar metadata is difficult to search and, increasingly, what is accessible is unfamiliar. Providing indexes to metadata vocabularies offers a remedy. We seek to exploit the potential significance of combining linguistic analysis with statistical methods to help searchers. We are designing an amenity that can easily be used on regular workstations and integrated into actual work environments with little investment of time and effort in order to improve performance when searching and thereby to improve the return on the investment in those systems. Advantages of this work are that it provides an alternative to the expensive human crafting of links within and between vocabularies, it is based on searching of fragments existing within the metadata and databases, it uses advanced probabilistic techniques, it allows the searcher to start a search using familiar search terms from a familiar vocabulary, it is designed for use in a networked environment, and, since only a training set is required, it allows for rapid deployment with unfamiliar metadata schemes.

The question “What is a digital document?” is seen as a special case of the question “What is a document?” Ordinarily the word “document” denotes a textual record. Early this century, attempts to provide access to the rapidly growing quantity of available documents raised questions about which should be considered a “document”. Paul Otlet and others developed a functional view of “document” and discussed whether, for example, sculpture, museum objects, and live animals, could be considered to be “documents”. Suzanne Briet equated “document” with organized physical evidence. These ideas resemble notions of “material culture” in cultural anthropology and “object-as-sign” in semiotics. Others, especially in the USA (e.g., Jesse Shera and Louis Shores) took a narrower view. Old confusions between medium, message, and meaning are renewed with digital technology because technological definitions of “document” become even less realistic when everything is in bits.

Ordinarily the word "document" denotes a textual record. Increasingly sophisticated attempts to provide access to the rapidly growing quantity of available documents raised questions about what should be considered a "document." The answer is important for any definition of the scope of Information Science. Paul Otlet and others developed a functional view of "document" and discussed whether, for example, sculpture, museum objects, and live animals, could be considered "documents." Suzanne Briet equated "document" with organized physical evidence. These ideas appear to resemble notions of "material culture" in cultural anthropology and "object-as-sign" in semiotics. Others, especially in the U.S.A. (e.g., Jesse Shera and Louis Shores) took a narrower view. New digital technology renews old questions and also old confusions between medium, message, and meaning.

Three related questions are addressed: why was the work of the European documentalists largely ignored in the U.S.A. before the Second World War? What was the "information science vs library science" argument about? Technological innovation was a vital force in library science in the late 19th century and again after 1950. Why was it not a vital force inbetween? Examination of the technological background and of the Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, suggests that there was a temporary paradigm change away from design and technological innovation. Arguments over "information science" reflected a reversal of that paradigm.

This article examines the structure and components of information storage and retrieval systems and information filtering systems. Analysis of the tasks performed in such selection systems leads to the identification of 13 components. Eight are necessarily present in all such systems, mechanized or not; the others may, but need not be, present. The authors argue that all selection systems can be represented in terms of combinations of these components. The components are of only two types: representations of data objects and functions that operate on them. Further, the functional components, or rules, reduce to two basic types: 1) transformation, making or modifying the members of a set of representations, and 2) sorting or partitioning. The representational transformations may be in the form of copies, excerpts, descriptions, abstractions, or mere identifying references. By partitioning, we mean dividing a set of objects by using matching, sorting, ranking, selecting, and other logically equivalent operations. The typical multiplicity of knowledge sources and of system vocabularies is noted. Some of the implications for the study, use, and design of information storage and retrieval systems are discussed. © 1994, MCB UP Limited. All rights reserved.

Theory is defined as a view or description of the nature of something. The nature of theory relating to records management is examined, including information retrieval, the records life cycle, and information policy. Records management theory should not be seen in isolation and need not be unique to records management. Functional, professional, and educational contexts of records management theory are outlined, with examples.Note: This paper is reprinted, with a few minor changes, from Association of Records Managers and Administrators, Proceedings of the ARMA International 35th Annual Conference, 1990 (Prairie Village, Kans.: ARMA, 1990), pp. 801-13.

Empirical studies of retrieval performance have shown a tendency for Precision to decline as Recall increases. This article examines the nature of the relationship between Precision and Recall. The relationships between Recall and the number of documents retrieved, between Precision and the number of documents retrieved, and between Precision and Recall are described in the context of different assumptions about retrieval performance. It is demonstrated that a tradeoff between Recall and Precision is unavoidable whenever retrieval performance is consistently better than retrieval at random. More generally, for the Precision–Recall trade‐off to be avoided as the total number of documents retrieved increases, retrieval performance must be equal to or better than overall retrieval performance up to that point. Examination of the mathematical relationship between Precision and Recall shows that a quadratic Recall curve can resemble empirical Recall–Precision behavior if transformed into a tangent parabola. With very large databases and/or systems with limited retrieval capabilities there can be advantages to retrieval in two stages: Initial retrieval emphasizing high Recall, followed by more detailed searching of the initially retrieved set, can be used to improve both Recall and Precision simultaneously. Even so, a tradeoff between Precision and Recall remains. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Three meanings of “information” are distinguished: “Information‐as‐process”; “information‐as‐knowledge”; and “information‐as‐thing,” the attributive use of “information” to denote things regarded as informative. The nature and characteristics of “information‐as‐thing” are discussed, using an indirect approach (“What things are informative?”). Varieties of “information‐as‐thing” include data, text, documents, objects, and events. On this view “information” includes but extends beyond communication. Whatever information storage and retrieval systems store and retrieve is necessarily “information‐as‐thing.” These three meanings of “information,” along with “information processing,” offer a basis for classifying disparate information‐related activities (e.g., rhetoric, bibliographic retrieval, statistical analysis) and, thereby, suggest a topography for “information science.” © 1991 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 1991 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.