INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL, TEXT COMPOSITION, AND SEMANTICS

Information science (IS) is concerned with the searching and retrieval of test and other information (IR), mostly in electronic databases an d on the Internet. Such databases contain fulltext (or other kinds of documents, e.g. pictures) and/or document representations and/or diffe rent kinds of ''value added information''. The core theoretical proble m for IS is related to the determination of the usefulness of differen t ''subject access points'' in electronic databases. This problem is a gain related to theories of meaning and semantics.(2) This paper outli nes some important principles in the design of documents done in the f ield of ''composition studies''. It maps the possible subject access p oints and presents research done on each kind of these. It shows how t heories of IR must build on or relate to different theories of concept s and meaning. It: discusses two contrasting theories of semantics wor ked out by Ludwig Wittgenstein: ''the picture theory'' and ''the theor y of language games'' and demonstrates the different consequences for such theories for IR. Finally, the implications for information profes sionals are discussed.