Marcia J. Bates

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Marcia J. Bates

Residence Los Angeles, California
Nationality American
Fields Information science
Institutions University of California, Los Angeles
Alma mater Pomona College, University of California, Berkeley
Known for Work on information seeking behavior, search strategy, subject access in manual and automated systems, information retrieval
Notable awards American Association for the Advancement for Science Fellow, American Society for Information Science Research Award and Award of Merit, American Society for Information Science "Best Journal of ASIS Paper of the Year Award," Frederick G. Kilgour Award

Marcia J. Bates (born 1942) is Professor VI Emerita of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. She has previously taught at the University of Maryland, College Park and was tenured at the University of Washington in 1981 before joining the faculty at UCLA. Bates has published widely on information seeking behavior, search strategy, subject access in manual and automated systems, and user-centered design of information retrieval systems. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recipient of the American Society for Information Science Research Award, 1998, Award of Merit, 2005, and has twice received the American Society for Information Science "Best Journal of ASIS Paper of the Year Award," in 1980 and 2000. In 2001 she received the Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology. With Mary Niles Maack and Miriam Drake, she is editor of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (Taylor & Francis, forthcoming).

Bates has consulted for numerous organizations in her areas of expertise, including private industry, dot-coms, government, and foundations. Among these organizations are the Library of Congress, Getty Research Institute, Council on Library and Information Resources, U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica (Guatemala), American Chemical Society, Litton Guidance and Control Systems, Amgen, Inc., Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., Ensemble, Inc. (San Rafael, CA), and Electric Schoolhouse (now Lightspan.com).

She received a B.A. from Pomona College and an M.L.S and Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley.

Contents

[edit] User-Centered Information System Design

Many of Bates' contributions have been in the area of user-centered information system design. Several of her papers have been widely cited and used, including articles on her concepts of "berrypicking," of "information search tactics," and the "cascade of interactions" in the user-system interface. [1][2][3][4] Most recently, her article re-defining the nature of browsing argues for a more natural and native understanding of the behavior, an understanding that will make possible more realistic browsing interfaces for information systems. [5]

[edit] Information-seeking behavior and subject access

Bates' work in user-centered design has been based in further work she has done on information seeking behavior and subject access to information resources. In conjunction with the Getty Research Institute, and other Getty agencies, she has studied humanities information seeking online extensively, producing six articles on the work. In subject access, as early as 1985, she has designed and argued for a "cluster thesaurus" that would bring together all the syntactic and semantic variants of a concept under each concept. Searches could then match on any term in the cluster, with the searcher able to select subsets of terms for further searching. This was also known as the "front-end system mind." [6][7] [8]

[edit] Definition of information

In her controversial article "Fundamental Forms of Information,"[9] Bates attempts to define information and several fundamental information forms. She introduced to the field notions of experienced information (what one perceives and thinks about), enacted information (what one does and observes others doing), and expressed information (communicatory expressions). She further talks about "recorded information" (self-explanatory) and "embedded information." The latter refers to information structures in the external environments that are created by humans and animals.

Her definition marks a stark change from the long held definition of information in communication theory. The communication model sees information as the flow and exchange of a message, originating from one speaker, mind, or source and received by another. According to Ronald Day, "Implicit in this standard model of information are such notions as the intentionality of the speaker, the self-evident 'presence' of that intention in his or her words, a set of hearers or users who receive the information and who demonstrate the correctness of that reception in action or use, and the freedom of choice in regards to the speaker's ability to say one thing rather than another, as well as even the receivers freedom of choice to receive one message rather than another in the marketplace of ideas."[10]

In contrast, according to Bates, information is the pattern of organization of matter and energy. She believes that all information is natural, in that it exists in the material world of matter and energy. Represented information is natural information that is encoded or embodied. Encoded information is information that has symbolic, linguistic, or signal based patters of organization. Embodied information is the corporal expression of manifestation of information previously in encoded information.

Bates claims there are three fundamental channels of information: genetic, neural-cultural, and exosomatic. "Genetic and neuro-cultural information are encoded, respectively, as the genotype and as nervous system structures and action potentials. Genetic and neural-cultural information are embodied, respectively, as the phenotype and as experienced information (experience, consciousness), enacted information (actions), and expressed information (communication). Exosomatic information, that is, information stored outside the body, has been developed in complex ways by human beings" and is differentiated as embedded information and recorded information.[11] Her view of information has been discussed by Hjørland.[12] and responded to by Bates.[13]

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface." Online Review 13, no. 5 (1989): 407-424
  2. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "Information Search Tactics." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 30 (July 1979): 205-214.
  3. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "The Cascade of Interactions in the Digital Library Interface." Information Processing and Management 38 (2002):381-400.
  4. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "Where Should the Person Stop and the Information Search Interface Start?" Information Processing & Management 26 (1990): 575-591.
  5. ^ Bates, Marcia J. (2007). "What is browsing—really? A model drawing from behavioural science research" Information Research, 12(4) paper 330. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/paper330.html]
  6. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "The Getty End-User Online Searching Project in the Humanities: Report No. 6: Overview and Conclusions." College & Research Libraries 57 (November 1996): 514-523.
  7. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "The Design of Databases and Other Information Resources for Humanities Scholars: the Getty Online Searching Project Report No. 4." Online & CDROM Review 18 (December 1994): 331-340
  8. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "Subject Access in Online Catalogs: A Design Model." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 37 (November 1986): 357-376.
  9. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "Fundamental Forms of Information." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57(8):1033-1045, 2006
  10. ^ Day, Ronald E. The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001: 38.
  11. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "Fundamental Forms of Information." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57(8):1044, 2006
  12. ^ Hjørland, Birger (2007). Information: Objective or subjective/situational? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58(10), 1448-1456,
  13. ^ Bates, Marcia J. "Hjørland's Critique of Bates' Work on Defining Information." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59(5): 842-844, 2008.