Filter & filtering (of information)
Belkin & Croft write that filtering is often meant to imply the removal of data from an incoming stream, rather than finding data in that stream.
"Information filtering is a name used to describe a variety of processes involving the delivery of information to people who need it. Although these terms are appearing quite often in popular and technical articles describing applications such as electronic mail, multimedia distributed systems, and electronic office documents, the distinction between filtering and related processes such as retrieval, routing, categorization, and extraction is often not clear. It is only by making that distinction, however, that the specific research issues associated with filtering can be identified and addressed. " (Belkin & Croft, 1992, p. 29).
"Thus, it seems there is indeed a research agenda for filtering beyond that which has been charted by IR. While this agenda has much to do with the contexts in which filtering is likely to take place, and its applications, it is also based on the underlying model of what it wants to do. That model, although in many respects equivalent to models of IR, specifically extends it in some interesting and important ways. This extension, and the research agenda accompanying it, seems likely to be of significance to IR as well as filtering, since it addresses issues that should be of importance to IR, but which IR has not addressed, primarily because of specialization to specific contexts and users" (Belkin & Croft, 1992, p. 37).
An Internet filter is a kind of censorware based on software, that filters by keyword or image recognition or blocks by URL what a web browser will display. The filter is controlled by some authority such as government or parents. There may be a many criteria for which the filter works, pornography is the most well-known.
Literature:
Belkin, N. J. & Croft, W. B. (1992). Information filtering and information retrieval: Two sides of the same coin? Communications of the ACM 35(12, December), 29-38. Available at: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~pddm/pdfs/twosides_of_coin.pdf
Christoffersen, M. (2004). Identifying core documents with a multiple evidence relevance filter. Scientometrics, 61(3), 385-394.
Gant, S. (1995). Information Filtering Bibliography. http://ils.unc.edu/gants/filterbib.html
Janssen, A. (2000). Freedom of speech, sexual harassment, and Internet filters
in academic libraries. Journal of Information Ethics, 9(2), 37-45.
Losee, R. M. (1998). Text Retrieval and Filtering: Analytic Models of
Performance. Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Schneider, K. G. (1997). A Practical Guide to
Internet Filters. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers. (A Neal-Schuman
Special Report).
White, V. J.; Glanville, J. M.; Lefebvre, C. & Sheldon, T. A. (2001). A
statistical approach to designing search filters to find systematic reviews:
objectivity enhances accuracy .
Journal of Information Science, 27(6), 357-370.
Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2006). Censorware. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorware
Information Filtering Resources: http://www.ee.umd.edu/medlab/filter/filter.html
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 09-04-2006