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Dissertation Information for Tefko Saracevic

NAME:
- Tefko Saracevic

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- Case Western Reserve University (USA) (1970)

ADVISORS:
- William Goffman

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Conrad H. Rawski
- Douglas G. Schultz
- Thomas Gleason Morris

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: On the Concept of Relevance in Information Science

Abstract:
Relevance is of concern to information science because it underlies the effectiveness of any and all communication processes. The inquiry is divided into two parts. In the first part the past views, trends, theories, definitions, hypotheses and experimental results related to relevance are synthesized and critically evaluated. This exploration culminated in a hypothesis, stating that relevant answers at a source and at a destination in a communication process are distributed in accordance to the Bradford law of literature scatter. The second part of the inquiry reports the results of an experiment confirming the hypothesis. The nature of distribution of relevant answers as retrieved by an experimental information retrieval system (source) and subsequently, as judged by users (destination) who posed queries, was observed. Both distributions were Bradfordian. Novel procedures were developed for comparing the two Bradford distributions, and, most
significantly, for the expression of the performance of a source as a function of Bradford zones. That is, formal relationships between a quantity of retrieval and a quality of relevance judgment were derived through the properties associated with Bradford distributions. These properties could be utilized in optimizing the performance of information systems. Finally, implications of the experiment were related to theory, experimentation and practical applications.

MPACT Scores for Tefko Saracevic

A = 24
C = 51
A+C = 75
T = 27
G = 2
W = 24
TD = 25.5
TA = 1
calculated 2014-02-09 18:16:54

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