“An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it… Where an information retrieval system tends not to be used, a more capable information retrieval system may tend to be used even less.”

—  Calvin Mooers

Calvin Mooers (1959) Mooers' law: or, why some retrieval systems are used and others are not. p. 138

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Calvin Mooers 5
American computer scientist 1919–1994

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“Information retrieval is the name for the process or method whereby a prospective user of information is able to convert his need for information into an actual list of citations to documents in storage containing information useful to him. It is the finding or discovery process with respect to stored information. It is another, more general, name for the production of a demand bibliography. Information retrieval embraces the intellectual aspects of the description of information and its specification for search, and also whatever systems, technique, or machines that are employed to carry out the operation. Information retrieval is crucial to documentation and organization of knowledge.”

Calvin Mooers (1919–1994) American computer scientist

Calvin Mooers (1951) "Zatocoding applied to mechanical organization of knowledge." American Documentation, 2, p. 25; Cited in: Birger Hjørland (2006) " Information retrival (IR) http://www.iva.dk/bh/Core%20Concepts%20in%20LIS/articles%20a-z/information_retrieval.htm" on iva.dk.

“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 (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: The Structure of Information Retrieval Systems (1959), p. 1275.

“The requirements of information retrieval, of finding information whose location or very existence is a priori unknown.”

Calvin Mooers (1919–1994) American computer scientist

Calvin Mooers (1947); cited in. Eugene Garfield (1997) "A Tribute To Calvin N. Mooers, A Pioneer Of Information Retrieval." The Scientist, Vol:11, #6, p. 9, March 17, 1997

“In the face of almost infinite useful knowledge, we have adopted the strategy of "information regeneration rather than information retrieval." …most importantly, you should be able to generate the result you need even if no one has ever done it before you”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: In the face of almost infinite useful knowledge, we have adopted the strategy of "information regeneration rather than information retrieval."... most importantly, you should be able to generate the result you need even if no one has ever done it before you—you will not be dependent on the past to have done everything you will ever need in mathematics.

Ernst Mayr photo

“Biological classifications have two major objectives: to serve as a basis of biological generalizations in all sort of comparative studies and to serve as a key to an information storage system… Is the classification that is soundest as a basis of generalizations also most convenient for information retrieval? This, indeed, seems to have been true in most cases I have encountered.”

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) German-American Evolutionary Biologist

Mayr (1981) as cited in: C. Gnoli (2011) "Ontological foundations in knowledge organization: the theory of integrative levels applied in citation order". Scire actas. 17-1

“Information retrieval consists of four main stages: Identifying the exact subject of the search; Locating this subject in a guide which refers the searcher to one or more documents; Locating the documents; Locating the required information in the documents.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: Classification and indexing in the social sciences (1963), p. 6 ; As cited in: Mei Hong (2006) " Potential Usage of Faceted Classification in Internet ‘‘Information Retrieval’’ http://ir.library.tohoku.ac.jp/re/bitstream/10097/17406/1/12_43.pdf" Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 1, p. 51

“The retrieval process begins when a lack of information shows itself in a human mind and the decision is taken to find out if this information has been discovered and published”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: Classification and indexing in the social sciences (1963), p. 86; As cited in: Mei Hong (2006, p. 44)

“Information retrieval is now an accepted part of the new discipline of information science and technology… I have concentrated on the field with which I am most familiar, the problems of bibliographic description and subject analysis.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (1970) Techniques of information retrieval, London: Butterworth. p. v; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011) " Brian Vickery and the foundations of information science http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/robinson.pdf".

“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 (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 25.

“There is as yet no unified theory of retrieval systems, and a good deal of retrieval practice is still an empirical art, unsullied by theory.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Preface (1961) p. vi; Partly cited by Stephen E. Robertson (2011) " On retrieval system theory http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/robertson.pdf".
On Retrieval System Theory (1961)

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