Some schemes for restructuring and mobilising information in documents: A historical perspective

摘要

Mobilising the information stored in documents to advance learning and social well-being provides information science with a fundamental social objective. It also presents it with a characteristic set of technical and professional problems. Until recently, information storage and retrieval systems, of which the library is one of the oldest and most important examples, have not provided a direct solution to the problem of providing access to needed information. Instead they have attempted to identify and provide physical access to written or printed documents that might contain information that is needed or might be useful. Perhaps creating systems to substitute what documents may be about for what documents contain is a process of realistic simplification in the face of overwhelming technical and “epistemological” problems. But it is speculative approaches to overcoming these problems that are the subject of this paper.