It’s Sunday morning and I’m listening to CNN’s State of the Union while working on a chapter of my book. I’m hearing mostly about the thwarted December 25th terrorist attack on the plane from Amsterdam to Detroit and the breakdown in the intelligence community as it concerns making the connections between information they had concerning the individual terrorist, his connection to Yemen, how and why things were missed that may have prevented him from being able to get on the plane in the first place, etc. At the same time I’m trying to write a chapter on our library information systems, what they are, what are library catalogs today, objectives, FRBR, etc. All of this brings to mind the complexity of an information system and the effect of that complexity on making those connections, the reliance and over-reliance on the technology (i.e., on commentator asked why the computer technology didn’t make the connection), and on human ability to make the connections, and so on. If we shift that complexity to the kinds of information systems we in LIS create, populate, manipulate, maintain, and cross-connect to other systems---it begs the question of how much complexity can we expect to be able to maintain or work within?
Let’s pretend that every information resource we have in our system(s) represents one terrorist and we are the intelligence community. A terrorist attack is equivalent to a failure to meet an information need (e.g., someone presented what they thought was a thorough report with all the facts, but it turns out they missed a major piece of info and a major deal broke down or someone got an F on a paper because of lack of viable resources).
As the organizers of the information (the raw data), our tools are description, authority control of names and headings, inclusion and exclusion of shared vocabulary, both natural language and controlled, our interpretation of the intentions of the resource creator from both ourselves and outside resources (i.e., agents on the ground, snitches, etc.), our judgment based on the experience, or inexperience, we have accumulated during our life, and the ability of the system to make these same types of judgment (based on how it’s been programmed). On top of that we as the organizers also have to have a strong understanding of the system or variety of systems that we work within, as well as information needs and information seeking abilities (human information behavior) of the users of those systems. Furthermore, we realize that we have no control over how that information is used, misused, or not used by the user---which logically would push us to make even richer representations as a way of attracting the user so they might use the information correctly and make those connections.
Are we insane to think we can make all the appropriate connections in order to predict, and therefore prevent, a terrorist attack/info need not met? If someone dropped the ball and didn’t put the information they had into a system or “out there” in the info stream or simply made a poor representation of that information—all or part of which is apparently part of the problem as it concerns this Dec 25 attack—then the connection isn’t made and our defenses are weakened. We share in the loss in the great game of information organization because missed connections may result in “deaths” of innocent individuals (i.e., useless reports, fail grades, etc.)
What is predictable and what is not? For example, did the Dec 25th terrorist work into the equation the actions of the passengers on the plane, or the (thankfully) faulty bomb equipment? We could translate this into our users coming to us to point out mistakes and/or missed connections between resources in our systems based on their personal knowledge/expertise.
Just thinking out loud. All of the varying opinions on the talk shows have me thinking about what we can expect and what we shouldn’t, action vs. inaction, complexity, connections, etc. How do we account for all of this when working within current information systems?
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Shawne D. Miksa, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
College of Information
University of North Texas
email: Shawne.Miksa_at_unt.edu<mailto:Shawne.Miksa_at_unt.edu>
http://courses.unt.edu/smiksa/index.htm
office 940-565-3560 fax 940-565-3101
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Received on Sun Jan 03 2010 - 12:13:01 EST