Marcia J. Bates

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Marcia J. Bates is Professor VI Emerita of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. She has previously taught at the University of Maryland, College Park and was tenured at the University of Washington in 1981 before joining the faculty at UCLA. Bates has published widely on information seeking behavior, search strategy, subject access in manual and automated systems, and user-centered design of information retrieval systems. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement for Science, a recipient of the American Society for Information Science Research Award, 1998, and has twice received the American Society for Information Science "Best Journal of ASIS Paper of the Year Award," in 1980 and 2000. In 2001 she received the Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology. With Mary Niles Maack and Miriam Drake, she is editor of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (CRC, 2007).

Bates has consulted for numerous organizations in her areas of expertise, including private industry, dot-coms, government, and foundations. Among these organizations are the Library of Congress, Getty Research Institute, Council on Library and Information Resources, U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica (Guatemala), American Chemical Society, Litton Guidance and Control Systems, Amgen, Inc., Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., Ensemble, Inc. (San Rafael, CA), and Electric Schoolhouse (now Lightspan.com).

She received a B.A. from Pomona College and an M.L.S and Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley.

Contents 1 Information-seeking behavior 2 Definition of information 3 External links 4 Notes

[edit] Information-seeking behavior

Bates has long been recognized for her accomplishments in the subfield information-seeking behavior. She introduced to the field notions of experienced information (what one perceives and thinks about in the process of finding information), enacted information (what one does and observes others doing in the process of finding information), and embedded information (how the architectural layout and design of instruments and documents affect their information use and information seeking behavior).^[1][2]

[edit] Definition of information

In her controversial article "Fundamental Forms of Information,"^[3] Bates attempts to define information and several fundamental information forms. Her definition marks a stark change from the long held definition of information in communication theory. The communication model sees information as the flow and exchange of a message, originating from one speaker, mind, or source and received by another. According to Ronald Day, "Implicit in this standard model of information are such notions as the intentionality of the speaker, the self-evident 'presence' of that intention in his or her words, a set of hearers or users who receive the information and who demonstrate the correctness of that reception in action or use, and the freedom of choice in ragrds to the speaker's ability to say one thing rather than another, as well as even the receivers freedom of choice to receive one message rather than another in the marketplace of ideas."^[4]

In contrast, according to Bates, information is the pattern of organization of matter and energy. She believes that all information is natural, in that it exists in the material world of matter and energy. Represented information is natural information that is encoded or embodied. Encoded information is information that has symbolic, linguistic, or signal based patters of organization. Embodied information is the corporal expression of manifestation of information previously in encoded information.

Bates claims there are three fundamental forms of information: genetic, neural-cultural, and exosomatic. "Genetic and neuro-cultural information are encoded, respectively, as the genotype and as nervous system structures and action potentials. Genetic and neural-cultural information are embodied, respectively, as the phenotype and as experienced information (experience, consciousness), enacted information (actions), and expressed information (communication). Exosomatic information, that is, information stored outside the body, has been developed in complex ways by human beings" and is differentiated as embedded information and recorded information.^[5]

[edit] External links

• Bates' Faculty Website
• UCLA Department of Information Studies

[edit] Notes