Dr. Saracevic to speak on “Relevance in information science” at Annual Lazerow Memorial Lecture

The School of Information Sciences invites you to hear Dr. Tefko Saracevic present the annual Thomson Scientific Lazerow Memorial Lecture to be held on September 19, 2007, from 11:30 - 12:30 pm in the Lindsay Young Auditorium at John C. Hodges Library on campus.*
Link to streaming video of the event (requires Windows Media Player to view).

Legendary information scientist Dr. Eugene Garfield will be a special guest at the lecture.

What makes information or information objects relevant? What is the nature of relevance? What do people look for in order to infer relevance?

Dr. Saracevic will trace the evolution of thinking on relevance in information science in the past three decades. He will provide an updated framework for research agenda in today's changing information environment.

The title of Dr. Saracevic's talk is “Relevance in information science.”

2007 Thomson ISI Lazerow Memorial Lecture with Tefko Saracevic

Abstract

Relevance is a, if not even the, key notion in information science in general and information retrieval in particular. This presentation is derived from a critical review that traces and synthesizes the scholarship on relevance over the past 30 years or so and provides an updated framework within which the still widely dissonant ideas and works about relevance might be interpreted and related (Saracevic, 2006). It is a continuation and update of a similar review that appeared in 1975 (Saracevic, 1976). After an introduction connecting concerns with relevance with information technology and a historical note, the present review is organized in four major parts: the first one addresses the questions related to the nature of relevance in terms of meaning ascribed to relevance, theories used or proposed, and models that have been developed. In the second part, the manifestations of relevance are classified as to several kinds of relevance that form an interdependent system of relevancies. In the third and fourth part, relevance behavior and effects are synthesized using experimental and observational works that incorporated data. Each part concludes with a summary that in effect provides an interpretation and synthesis of contemporary thinking on the topic treated or suggests hypotheses for future research. Analyses of some of the major trends that shape relevance work are offered in conclusions.

Bio

Dr. Tefko Saracevic is a professor II at the School of Communication, Information and Library Science at Rutgers University. He has researched and published widely on the evaluation of information retrieval systems; notion of relevance in information science; human aspects in human-computer interaction in information retrieval; user and use studies in information science and librarianship; studies of user-derived value of information and library services; evaluation of digital libraries; and analysis of web queries as submitted to search engines. See http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko/ for more.

For more information, contact Dr. Peiling Wang at peilingw@utk.edu
* The Lindsay Young Auditorium at John C. Hodges Library is located at 1015 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, Tennessee, 37996.
The distinguished Thomson Scientific Lazerow Memorial Lectures are sponsored by the Institute for Scientific Information's Corporate Awards Program (http://scientific.thomson.com/index.html). The Lecture Series was established by ISI in 1983, to honor the memory of Samuel Lazerow, who was an outstanding librarian, administrator, and pioneer in library automation.