INFORMATION IN A DATA-COLLECTION - MODELS OF DATABASE AND LIBRARY QUALITY

A collection of data, whether encoded as a relational database or as a document collection, contains information that may be measured. We assume that a maximally informative collection is desirable; that is, given the constraints of capacity and costs of acquisition and storage, the best data collection is the collection containing the greatest amount of information. Several measures of information are described and applied to the measurement of the information content of relations, documents, and books, both singly and in collections. The characteristics of the measures are examined, including the ability of a measure to predict the amount of information that will be available. The utility theoretic measure proposed by Belis is argued to be the most appropriate measure of collection information. It is used to compare the information in two library collections. The methods of counting database or document uses, or treating library circulations as a measure of collection quality, are seen to be consistent with the Belis information measure. © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.