Department of Language and Business Communication hereby introduces the PhD course

Information Needs and User-Adapted Data Access
The joint challenge for information science and lexicography

TIME
27-29 September, 2010

VENUE
Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus
(organised by Centre for Lexicography).

COURSE DESCRIPTION
With the advent of the information or knowledge society, the 21^st century is characterized by a growing need for information. However, it is important to take into account the information costs, i.e. the time (money) spent in the search for and retrieval of the relevant information. On the one hand, there have never been more relevant information sources available. On the other hand, it is frequently very difficult, if not impossible, to get the information needed. The concepts of “information stress” or even “information death” are well-known and costly phenomena. Two basic things are needed: first, to understand that information needs are never abstract needs, but always related to specific types of users finding themselves in specific types of communicative, cognitive or operational situations where these needs occur; and secondly, to provide quick and easy access to exactly the types of data from which the needed information can be retrieved.

The PhD course will introduce the basic theory of information needs and needs-adapted data access and provide some basic concepts, principles and methods that may allow the participants themselves to plan the selection and presentation of data in electronic or printed text books, manuals, how-to’s, user guides and lexicographical works adapted to the needs of specific types of users in specific types of situations.

The course is especially relevant for PhD students within the disciplines of information science, lexicography, communication and language policy, but also for other PhD students who work with data that need to be presented in a quickly and easily accessible and user-friendly way.

Information needs in the 3^rd Millennium

• (Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary of fixed expressions, Accounting dictionaries, Donald Duck)
• The concept of information needs
• Information needs in the information society
• Relations between databases and mono- or polyfunctional information sources
• Presentation of data
• Access to data in different kinds of tools
• Concrete approach A: Theo B. (Write a few words about 1, 2 or 3 examples from your experience)
• Concrete approach B: Manuals, user guides
• Concrete approach C: Databases and the conception of information tools for (1) music terms, (2) molecular biology and (3) tourism
• Projects presented by the participants

ORGANISERS

Professor Henning Bergenholtz
Centre for Lexicography
Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University
Denmark

Professor Theo Bothma
Department of Information Science
University of Pretoria
South Africa

Professor Sven Tarp
Centre for Lexicography
Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University
Denmark


CONTACT
If you have any questions, please contact course secretary Vibeke Vrang, vv@asb.dk