Measuring Information: An Information Services Perspective (library And Information Science)

Measuring information is a key part of evaluating information services such as libraries, on-line services, information centers in organizations, and more. Measuring Information: An Information Services Perspective presents a new user-centered measure of information and describes how to use this method to evaluate information services of all kinds, especially library acquisitions. The book uses the mathematical theory of measurement to derive this measure. Itshows how it can be applied to a number of evaluation problems relating to overall services and a choice of databases, collection policies, classification schemes, retention schedules, indexing, languages, search strategies, and information packaging in information service agencies.
Dr. Tague-Sutcliffe was awarded the 1996 Award of Merit from the American Society of Information Science (ASIS) for her lifetime contributions to research and education in the field of information science. Measuring Information was also awarded the 1996 ASIS award for Best Information Science Book, based on its importance to information science and technology, readability, validity, originality, research significance and scholarship.

Written by a recognized authority on theory and method of measurement in information science
Provides the tools to evaluate the usefulness of information from libraries and information retrieval systems
Illustrates techniques with examples and computer source codes

(This book) both synthesizes many years of research in the information science field, and presents new ideas on methods of measurement of information. A librarian planning a major measurement project for which such a technical approach would be suitable , may be well served by this book.
--Jeannine Cyr Gluck in MEDICAL REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY
Highly recommended.
--Robert M. Hayes, LIBRARY DIGEST
The author combines a sophisticated understanding of library practice with mathematical skills, knowledge of information science, and empirical research methodology. The result is an extraordinary contribution to the field of library and information science. This is an extremely important book that should anchor information science collections. It is going to be extensively referenced by information science researchers because Tague-Sutcliffes methodologies will spawn streams of empirical studies applying her measures.
--Terrence A. Brooks in JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP
Jean Tague-Sutcliffe is one of the leading scholars and teachers in information science, with a particular strength in bibliometrics, and has written an important monograph on measuring the performance of methods that provide information to users, withchapters describin how to measaure user-record informativeness, aggregating these values, and evaluating information services. The book provides a sophisticated justification for tools and measures used to evaluate information-based systems, moving beyondsimple statistical techniques to take into account the variou sproblems and conditions that face information professionals managing information systems...It is a pleasure reading material that so clearly addresses the problems of the field.
--Robert Losee, University of North Carolina, in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE