“Bertie Brookes and I shared a common view that, beyond the practical activities of information provision, there could be discerned a more general science of information. He tended towards a mathematical formulation of this: I was more interested in its social aspects.”

—  Brian Campbell Vickery

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 24-25.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Bertie Brookes and I shared a common view that, beyond the practical activities of information provision, there could b…" by Brian Campbell Vickery?
Brian Campbell Vickery photo
Brian Campbell Vickery84
British information theorist 1918–2009

Related quotes

“Information science is concerned with every aspect of the chain of information transfer activities, but the heart of its interest is information search.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (1997) "Metatheory and information science," Journal of Documentation, 53(5), p. 460.

“Information science is identified as… the study of the communication of information in society. This meaning is only beginning to emerge from its practical background, the social activity of facilitating information transfer.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Science in Theory and Practice (1987), p. 1; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Kenneth Arrow photo

“I then follow up with four major aspects of economic research in the last 60 years, the period of my scholarly activity. One, econometric methodology and practice, is of such fundamental importance that it cannotgo unnoticed, although I played no role in it. With the other three, general equilibrium, dynamic processes, and uncertainty and information, I was more intimately involved.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Kenneth Arrow, "Some Developments in Economic Theory Since 1940: An Eyewitness Account" Annu. Rev. Econ. 2009
New millennium

“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.

“It is essential to stress that information science is not solely concerned with science information, nor indeed only with the provision of information to academic and professional workers, but with all forms of information transfer in society.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Science in Theory and Practice (1987), p. 11.

“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 (1919–1994) American computer scientist

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

“”Information science” emerges (a) when conceptual explorations, not directed towards immediate practical or technical ends, begin to take place, and (b) they are seen to be concerned with a definable area of interest [that of facilitating the transmission of information between people].”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 220; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

“Information practice… consists of two activities that we may call diagnosis and prevention. Diagnosis is identifying what is the most probable information need of a user in a particular state of information want. Provision is deciding what action is most likely to meet that need. Information science seeks to understand the potential range of user situations giving rise to information want and needs; to develop methods of identifying the actual information needed; to understand and expand the range of possible ways of satisfying information need; and to develop methods of deciding what way is most likely to be effective in a particular case.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Meeting the challenge (2009), p. xxii-xxiii; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

The New York Times (12 November 2005).

“I am whole-heartedly in favour of the profession learning more about the history of [information transfer]. We have a tendency to focus on the newest forms of information provision … neglecting the continued existence and continuing importance of all the previous forms… But our profession is not that of the historian (or sociologist or philosopher) interesting as their work may be.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information history – an introduction (2009), p. 246.

Related topics