Brian Campbell Vickery Quotes

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Facet analysis results in more varied, multidimensional relationships, at least in theory, better reflecting the complexity of subject knowledge

Brian Campbell Vickery
User needs determine what functions should be provided, and different functions require different structures.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Throughout the nineteenth century, apart from the division in theoretical sciences and arts, classifiers attempted to divide the sciences into two groups. Already they had before them the examples of Francis Bacon (speculative and descriptive) and Hobbes (quantitative and qualitative). For Coleridge, the sciences were either pure (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Metaphysics) or mixed. Arthur Schopenhauer's similar groups were called pure and empirical, Wilhelm Wundt in 1887 called them formal and empirical, Globot mathematical and theoretical, and the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences (1904) normative and physical. Karl Pearson made similar division of the sciences into abstract and concrete

Brian Campbell Vickery
The areas traditionally concerned with such systems are: publishing in all its ramification, librarianship, bibliography, documentation, record management, archives and the like. Systematic study of the activities in all these areas has lead to increased recognition of their common features. They are all concerned with information systems, and their study may include in the wider field of 'information science and technology' (as the Americans put it) or 'informatics' (as Soviet writers would have it).

Brian Campbell Vickery
I am whole-heartedly in favour of the profession learning more about the history of [information transfer]. We have a tendency to focus on the newest forms of information provision … neglecting the continued existence and continuing importance of all the previous forms… But our profession is not that of the historian (or sociologist or philosopher) interesting as their work may be.

Brian Campbell Vickery
It is essential to stress that information science is not solely concerned with science information, nor indeed only with the provision of information to academic and professional workers, but with all forms of information transfer in society.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Varied views were put forward as to the content and priorities of information science, though there was general agreement that its central topics should be information organisation, dissemination and retrieval.

Brian Campbell Vickery
The area of scientific interest is... the study of the objectives, functions, structure, properties, behaviour, performance and effects of informative communication processes and information systems. To this study the name "information science" can legitimately be attached.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Information practice is concerned with facilitating the interaction between knowledge seekers – through channels – with knowledge (personal and recorded). Stepping back from practice, we may see the role of the science as exploring the characteristics of people and their information behaviour, the features of knowledge records of every kind, the variety of channels (oral, written, printed, graphic, digital) that may be used to transmit information, and how the three elements interact.

Brian Campbell Vickery
The basic rules of classification are
- Each characteristic of division must produce at least two classes
- Only one principle of division must be used at a time, to produce mutually exclusive classes.
- The species of any genius must be completely exhaustive of their parent class.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Perhaps an underlying cause [of doubt as to the future of information science] is in some cases... the apprehension that information science may become submerged in the larger field of computer science.

Brian Campbell Vickery
In scientific information, then, we find that subjects - the themes and topics on which books and articles are written - cluster into fields, each of which can be analysed into its characteristic set of facets of terms.

Brian Campbell Vickery
The representation of knowledge in symbolic form is a matter that has pre-occupied the world of documentation since its origin. The problem is now relevant in many situations other than documents and indexes. The structure of records and files in databases: data structures in computer programming; the syntactic and semantic structure of natural language; knowledge representation in artificial intelligence; models of human memory: in all these fields it is necessary to decide how knowledge may be represented so that the representations may be manipulated.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Information science is identified as... the study of the communication of information in society. This meaning is only beginning to emerge from its practical background, the social activity of facilitating information transfer.

Brian Campbell Vickery
The job of our profession is to facilitate the provision of knowledge (in all forms) to those who need it (for whatever purpose).

Brian Campbell Vickery
Information practice... consists of two activities that we may call diagnosis and prevention. Diagnosis is identifying what is the most probable information need of a user in a particular state of information want. Provision is deciding what action is most likely to meet that need. Information science seeks to understand the potential range of user situations giving rise to information want and needs; to develop methods of identifying the actual information needed; to understand and expand the range of possible ways of satisfying information need; and to develop methods of deciding what way is most likely to be effective in a particular case.

Brian Campbell Vickery
The analogy with bibliographic classifications and thesauri is obvious... despite the differences, it is to be regretted that 'ontological engineers' make little or no reference to work in information science. As a consequence, they do not appear to draw at all on the rich experience of constructing knowledge schedules … or... developing concept lexicons.

Brian Campbell Vickery
A retrieval system can be studied at three levels: The way in which units of information, and relevant relations between them, are defined in the system. This is the semantic level of subject analysis. The general structural features of the system considered as a network of units of information linked to each other and to documentary items. This may be called structural analysis. The physical mechanisms (hardware) in which the structure is embodied.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Theoretical research in information science is still marked by a tendency to play safe... it is still marked by timidity. It could now afford to be more boldly speculative, intellectually exciting and therefore more attractive to intelligent and ambitious students. Have things changed?

Brian Campbell Vickery
[Information] science and technology are now so closely linked that analysis and experiment lead quickly on to invention, to the introduction of new channels (and documents).

Brian Campbell Vickery
[The particular concern of the information scientist] is with the process as a whole – the interaction between the three elements [information behaviour, records, channels] that leads to people becoming informed.

Brian Campbell Vickery
The development of information research has increased considerably the interaction of emerging information science with other disciplines. Librarianship has traditionally had links with education and classification and has drawn ideas from logic and philosophy. But during the last fifty years new insights and methods have been derived from sociology and social psychology, from computer science, from operations research and related quantitative approaches, from communications research, from linguistics, and most recently from the new hybrids: cognitive science and artificial intelligence.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Four basic operations in the effective use of graphic records (documents), to store information and make it available, have been listed by Hyslop: A, recording information in documents; B, storing recorded information—documentary items; C, identifying items containing information relevant to a given problem, situation, or subject; D, providing the identified items from storage. Information storage and retrieval in the wide sense covers all these operations. In the narrow sense used in this paper, information retrieval means only C, identifying documentary items by subject.

Brian Campbell Vickery
For the profession as a whole, it is necessary that our hard-won understanding of our discipline be handed on to the next generation in a formal way.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Systems transfer or transform materials, energy or information - and usually all three. An information system is one whose prime function is to transfer or transform information: the telephone system is an obvious example. This book concentrates on certain types of information system: those concerned with the transfer of information between specialists, mainly with reference to their work, and mainly based on documents. The focus is thus on specialised documentary information systems.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Documentation is a practice concerned with all the processes involved in transferring documents from sources to users.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Despite the fact that our profession constantly urges others to consult the literature, I do not think we are distinguished nowadays by knowledge of our heritage.

Brian Campbell Vickery
Information science emerges (a) when conceptual explorations, not directed towards immediate practical or technical ends, begin to take place, and (b) they are seen to be concerned with a definable area of interest [that of facilitating the transmission of information between people].

Brian Campbell Vickery
Scientific information is faced with the following problem. On the one hand, we have the world's literature of science and technology, past and present, in many languages; on the other, and enquirer with a question. How to select, from a vast mass of words, the few that are the most closely relevant to an enquiry? It is this selection process that makes use of classification.

Brian Campbell Vickery
I met Ranga on several occasions. He was a fascinating personality, highly organised, a tireless worker, a fierce enthusiast, a charming man. Speaking of his passion for work, he told me once how his young son had stuck a notice on his study door: Librarianship is unfair to families... It really was a privilege to have known him.

Brian Campbell Vickery