Marcia Bates



Early Life

Marcia Bates was born in 1942. She earned a Bachelors Degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California in 1963. After graduation, Bates joined the Peace Corps as a Volunteer and taught English as a second language in Thailand for two years. In 1967, Bates returned to school for a Master of Library and Science degree and continued on to receive a PhD in 1972, both from the University of California, Berkeley.

Career

In 1981, she became a tenured Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle after previously working at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is now a “Professor VI”,( a special rank given to professors), at the University of California, Los Angeles where she has served as both Associate Dean and Department Chair. She holds the title of Professor Emerita, which is a title given to female professors who have retired in an “honorable standing” but still keeps the title of Professor.

Dr. Bates is a well-respected writer of many technology articles. Topics include subject access in manual and automated systems, search strategy, user-centered design of information retrieval systems, and information seeking behavior. She is also a very active consultant for several organizations in her field, such as the Library of Congress, U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., American Chemical Society and the Electric Schoolhouse. Dr. Bates is also an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement for Science.

At this time, Dr. Bates is the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Edition.

Publications, Patents, and Other Intellectual Property

Marcia Bates has published the following: "Fundamental Forms of Information," "Speculations on Browsing, Directed Searching, and Linking in Relation to the Bradford Distribution,” "The Cascade of Interactions in the Digital Library Interface,” "The Invisible Substrate of Information Science,” and "Indexing and Access for Digital Libraries and the Internet: Human, Database, and Domain Factors." The “Fundamental Forms of Information,” published in 2006, gives the reader the definition of how Bates defines information, as well as giving definitions and examples of other terms used in the field of information science in order to give the reader a good base to build his knowledge. The "Speculations on Browsing, Directed Searching, and Linking in Relation to the Bradford Distribution,” published in 2002, goes into detail about searching for information by highlighting three different sections of the Bradford Distribution. "The Cascade of Interactions in the Digital Library Interface,” published in 2002, talks about how information systems are used to agree with, have a neutral agreement, or conflict other information systems. This allows for efficient information retrieval through services like World Wide Web in a “digital library design.” Her publication of "The Invisible Substrate of Information Science” in 1999 illustrates to the reader that not only knowing information is important, but also knowing how to represent and organize it is just as important. "Indexing and Access for Digital Libraries and the Internet: Human, Database, and Domain Factors," published in 1998, talks about the idea of indexing information and gaining access to digital resources and brings up ideas like Bradford’s Law and vocabulary scalability.

Application to IT or ITC professionalsCat09f (talk) 21:50, September 24, 2012 (UTC) 

Marcia Bates is important for IT or ITC professionals to know about because of her bold prediction/foresight in 1989. According to Marcia bates, as more and more different types of databases are brought online, the universe of information available to search online is beginning to resemble the vast array of sources available in manual print environments. From an original emphasis on bibliographic databases, which are the online equivalent of abstracting and indexing (A & I) services, databanks have expanded to the full text of journals and other documents, as well as directories, encyclopedias and other reference sources are traditionally available in libraries. Soon there really will be something approaching most libraries accessible by computer. ” She predicted the usefulness of the modern day web before it was in widespread use. Dr. Bates also accurately predicted how modern search engines would work with users to find relevant data people are looking for on the web. “Some systems are designed to do their own searching and some permit browsing but much experimental research seems to be moving toward an ultimate ideal of the system that takes a request in natural language, goes off and searches the information store, and returns to the user the ideal best retrieved set of documents or information.” “There is considerable empirical research available that supports the idea that at least some people want to control their own searches or do other things that typical automated systems do not allow and often do not even aspire to make possible.” User control searches have made web browsers like Google Chrome user friendly and dominant in the web searching business. This dominance is in part because users get the data they want and they feel they’re given greater control of their web searches. This information is important for Professionals because they need to know where the internet came from and what advancements to expect in the future to accommodate end users.98.230.0.8 02:39, September 24, 2012 (UTC)amo10

Awards and Recognitions 

Marcia J. Bates is an accomplished Professor VI who has claimed many awards throughout her tenure. For starters, Dr. Bates is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement for Science. An honor bestowed upon members to well respected scientists within the organization. In 2005, she received the Award of Merit from the American Society for Information Science and Technology, the association’s highest award. This award is meant to recognize individuals who have made remarkable contributions to the field of Information Science. This is a once in a lifetime award for the recipients and is considered a great honor. She is also a recipient of the ASIST Research Award (1998) due to her outstanding contributions to the field.

She has twice received the American Society for Information Science "Best Journal of ASIS Paper of the Year Award". Her first time receiving the award was in 1979 with Information Search Tactics, and her second time was in 2000 for The Invisible Substrate of Information Science. The journals are “judged on the significance of the contributions to knowledge; relevance to key issues in information science; validity of results; originality of ideas; methods or applications; and quality of the presentation”. In 2001 she received the Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology, co-sponsored by the American Library Association’s Library and Information Technology Association and OCLC, Inc. The purpose of the Fredrick G. Kilgour award is to acknowledge the relevant research to the development of information technologies, especially the work that shows to have a positive impact in the retrieval and dissemination of information. Dr. Bates has no shortage of accomplishments, as she continues to pursue her own and humanities advancement in the name of science.

Critical analysis and interpretation 

Marica Bates' early work dealt with searching success and failure in library catalogs. She then went on to being well known for her work in Information seeking behavior, search strategy, subject access to information and user centered of design of information systems. She is also widely published in these areas and several of her papers have been cited and reference to. Some of her more, well known articles were on the concepts of "berrypicking," of "information search tactics," and the "cascade of interactions" in the user-system interface.

In subject access she went on to designed and argued for a "cluster thesaurus" that would bring together all the syntactic and semantic variants of a concept under each concept. Her approach to the development of human and animal information and knowledge, marked a change from the definition of information in communication theory.

The following is a brief description in of what she specialized in:

 ·   Information seeking behavior - "Information behavior" is the currently preferred term used to describe the many ways in which human beings interact with information, in particular, the ways in which people seek and utilize information. The broad history of research on information seeking behavior over the last 50-60 years is reviewed, major landmarks are identified, and current directions in research are discussed.

 · Search    Strategy - These tactics are designed to be of assistance to the searcher while in the process of searching, and secondarily in teaching fledgling searchers their work. They may also suggest various lines of research on search strategy, including, ultimately, efforts to describe and distinguish the skills of the experienced searcher.

 ·   Subject Access to Information - methods and systems by which books, journals, and other documents are accessed in a given bibliographic database.

'''User-centered design of design of information systems. - This is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.'''

References

Bates, Marcia J."The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface"(1989): 1 98.230.0.8 02:39, September 24, 2012 (UTC)amo10 Bates, Marcia J. " Where Should the Person Stop and the Information Search Interface Start?"(1990): 575-576< http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~muresan/IR/Docs/Articles/ipmBates1990.pdf>98.230.0.8 02:39, September 24, 2012 (UTC)amo10

Bates, Marcia J. "Fundamental Forms of Information." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57, #8 (2006): 1033-1045.

Bates, Marcia J. "Speculations on Browsing, Directed Searching, and Linking in Relation to the Bradford Distribution." In: Emerging Frameworks and Methods: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS 4). Edited by Harry Bruce, Raya Fidel, Peter Ingwersen, and Pertti Vakkari. Greenwood Village, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2002, pp. 137-150.

Bates, Marcia J. "The Cascade of Interactions in the Digital Library Interface." Information Processing and Management 38 (2002):381-400.

Bates, Marcia J. "The Invisible Substrate of Information Science." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, #12 (1999): 1043-1050.

<p style="text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Bates, Marcia J. "Indexing and Access for Digital Libraries and the Internet: Human, Database, and Domain Factors." Journal of the American Society for Information Science. "Emerita." The Free Dictionary. Farlex, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emerita>. <p style="border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-top:1em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;vertical-align:baseline;"> "Marcia J. Bates." Marcia J. Bates. University of California, Los Angeles, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/>.

<p style="border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-top:1em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;vertical-align:baseline;"> "SSRC." Marcia J. Bates â <span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:新細明體;mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-font-family:新細明體"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt; font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:新細明體;mso-bidi-font-family:新細明體">” . N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/marcia-j-bates/person_view>. '''

<p style="border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-top:1em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">'''ASIST. (1991, 10 31). Award of merit. Retrieved from <http://www.asis.org/awards/awardofmerit.html>.'''

<p style="border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin-top:1em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;vertical-align:baseline;"><span style="color:rgb(48,48,48);font-family:'HelveticaNeue',arial,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">"Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology (LITA / OCLC)", American Library Association, September 15, 2008.

<p style="color:rgb(48,48,48);font-family:HelveticaNeue,arial,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">http://www.ala.org/lita/awards/kilgour

<p style="color:rgb(48,48,48);font-family:HelveticaNeue,arial,sans-serif;line-height:normal;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'TimesNewRoman';font-size:16px;line-height:19px;text-indent:-48px;">American Society for Information Science and Technology (n.d.). Best jasist paper award<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'TimesNewRoman';font-size:16px;line-height:19px;text-indent:-48px;">. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/lita/awards/kilgour

<p style="color:rgb(48,48,48);font-family:HelveticaNeue,arial,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">11:25 pm, September 24, 2012 (UTC) rnr08c