Information Seeking and Subject Representation An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Information Science

Subjects:

• Library & Information Science » Information Science

Reviews:

• ...this book provides a useful bridge between philosophy and classification and offers a significant theoretical discourse on the meaning of classification. Its questioning of the technological solution to retrieval problems makes it salutary for cataloguers and indexers seeking a fundamental basis for why they do what they do.
  —The Australian Library Journal
• This publication provides an excellent overview of theoretical and practical aspects of its subject and brings together in one volume the discussion of subject analysis and representation with information seeking. It is essential reading for library and information science educators, practitioners and students in both knowledge organization and information seeking.
  —Knowledge Organization
• This is a very interesting and thought-provoking book. It offers a promising and potentially far-reaching alternative approach to traditional approaches in IS. I would like to recommend this book to researchers and professionals in Information Science and Librarianship in general and other disciplines concerning knowledge organisation and communication.
  —Journal of the American Society for Information Science
• There are many good things about this book. The author's fundamental argument against the cognitive perspective in information science is extremely important. Hjorland focuses on the epistemological basis of his position (as opposed to what works and what doesn't work in practice), but his treatment of it is not heavy-handed or didactic....Indeed, one can see that every effort was made to make the structure of the book accessible to graduate students.
  —Information Processing and Management
• ...Hjorland opens some interesting dialog from a view other than the prevailing cognitive viewpoint.
  —Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
• ...Information Seeking and Subject Representation constitutes one of the most stimulating, thoughtful, and well worked through sets of ideas to be presented to the information science field in a long time. The book deserves wide reading and discussion.
  —Library Quarterly
• The book is written in an accessible language, and, for the most part, requires little prior knowledge. Together with workers by Soergel and Fugmann, it is one of the most important contributions to the literature of the last two decades. While not all readers will embrace Hjorland's approach, his work is a promising starting point for discussions about these issues which are so essential to library and information science and work.
  —The Journal of Academic Librarianship
• Hjorland offers a theoretically challenging argument to information science research and researchers and his work is also a challenge to the intellectual isolation of information science from the broader philosophical and sociological debate on the nature of scientific inquiry....[The] quality of referencing and indexing is excellent. In addition to the substantial notes appended to each chapter there is a nineteen page selected(!) bibliography and an eleven page author/subject index. These together with the contents page provide a more than adequate guide around the intellectual landscape explored by the work.
  —Journal of Documentation, Vol 55, #3, 1999
• This is an interesting and thought-provoking work...it is worth reading and will be of interest to many archivists who blend a love of the humanities and philosophical argument with the technical information-processing perspective necessary today. Indeed, this is one of the few philosophical or theoretical treatments of information seeking or subject representation, and it is interesting for that reason alone.
  —The American Archivist

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Information Seeking and Subject Representation
• Subject Searching and Subject Representation Data
• Subject Analysis and Knowledge Organization
• The Concept of Subject or Subject Matter and Basic Epistemological Positions
• Methodological Consequences for Information Science
• Science, Discipline, and Subject Field as a Framework for Information Seeking
• Information Needs and Cognitive and Scientific Development
• Selected Bibliography
• Index