A. Data, Metadata, Information and Knowledge.
1. The Information Life Cycle
a. Data to Information. Creating information. Editing and Publication.
b. Collecting and Integrating information.
c. Data, Information and Metadata. Describing data and information.
d. Organizing Information.
e. Retrieving Information.
f. Using Information. Information to Knowledge.
g. Knowledge to New Data and Information.
2. Types of Information.
a. Differentiation by form.
b. Differentiation by content.
c. Differentiation by quality.
3. Types of Metadata.
a. Element names.
b. Element description.
c. Element representation.
d. Element coding.
e. Element semantics.
f. Element classification.
B. Data Structures, Data Models and Database Design.
1. Structured, semi-structured and un-structured data.
2. Documents and files.
a. Text Documents.
i. Unstructured text.
ii. Structured text. (Explicit and implicit structures) (books, journal articles, bibliographic records, etc.)
iii. Standards and systems for textual markup (e.g., sgml, html)
b. Non-Textual Documents: Standards and content.
i. Images and graphics (Bitmaps, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, structured graphics).
ii. Audio recordings (Sound recording formats, WAV files).
iii. Film and Video Recordings (Formats, MPEG).
iv. "Realia".
c. Digital Multimedia Information.
d. Files and file structures
3. Databases: Handling structured data.
a. Database models: Hierarchical, Network, Relational, Object-Oriented.
b. Principles of database design.
i. Data and Systems Analysis.
ii. Conceptual Model.
iii. Logical Model.
iv. Data structure design.
v. Physical Model.
vi. Internal and External views of the database.
c. Conceptual Data modeling: entity-relationship models.
d. Data structures and database organization.
4. Advantages and failings of database system technology.
5. Database systems, un-structured and semi-structured information.
6. Text Retrieval systems.
C. Describing and defining information.
1. Standards, systems and rules for describing information sources.
a. Bibliographic descriptions (ISBD, MARC, citation rules, etc.)
b. Object descriptions (AAT, Taxonomic description, etc.)
2. Systems, standards, and methods for classification of knowledge.
a. Classification schemes.
i. Special purpose
ii. General Bibliographic classifications (Dewey, LCC, UDC, etc.)
iii. Classification of Cyberspace (Yahoo, etc.)
b. Automatic categorization and classification.
3. Systems, standards, and methods of Content Analysis
a. Statistical properties of documents and indexing languages (bibliometrics and term frequency distributions).
b. Indexes and Indexing
i. Index Components and Types of Indexes.
ii. Index Entries: types and structure.
iii. Syndetic structure.
iv. Pre- and Post-Coordination of terms.
v. Choosing index terms.
c. Thesauri and Vocabulary Control
i. Thesaurus design.
ii. Thesaurus construction.
iii. Thesaurus maintenance.
d. Automatic and semi-automatic indexing methods.
i. Simple methods (KWIC, KWOC, etc.)
ii. Statistical and Probabilistic methods.
iii. Theoretical studies in automatic indexing.
iv. Permuted indexes (PRECIS, etc.)
v. Natural Language Processing and Disambiguation.
4. Evaluating Description systems, indexing languages and thesauri.
D. Access to information content.
1. Information seeking and defining information needs.
2. Systems and standards for access to information content.
a. Manual systems. (Using catalogs and indexes).
b. Boolean systems. (Boolean Logic, Venn diagrams).
c. Database systems. (Using database frontends for searching, SQL).
d. Internet Search systems. (Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, Z39.50).
3. Information retrieval research and effectiveness
a. Assumptions in IR performance evaluation.
i. Who determines relevance?
ii. Fully automated vs. interactive systems.
b. Measures of IR performance. (Precision and Recall, etc.).
4. Examination and evaluation of information search and navigation strategies