Jean Tague-Sutcliffe

Jean Tague-Sutcliffe (1931 – September 1996) was an information scientist known for her contributions to the field of informetrics. She developed models for information measurement and information retrieval using empirical methods and statistical data. In addition to the ASIST Award of Merit (1996), she is the namesake of the annual Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition awarded by the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) since its 1997 establishment in her memory by students at University of Western Ontario, where she served as Dean from 1984 to 1995.

Photo Available @ https://celebrate.fims.uwo.ca/fims-memories/

Life

Tague-Sutcliffe obtained a bachelor of library science degree from McGill University and a Ph.D. (1960s) from Case Western Reserve University.[1] Around 1990, she married Bill Sutcliffe; they had three children: Christina, Fred, and Liza.[2]

Contributions

Tague's research was funded by the Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the International Development and Research Council, and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). In the 1990s, she helped developed statistical tests for experiments run by the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC). Her research primarily focused on the development of mathematical models for retrieval of information, with an emphasis on bibliometrics. She was a founding member of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI). She became the Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario in 1984 and served in that position until 1995. She won two awards from ASIS&T including the Award of Merit, and served as a Director-at-Large.

Publications

• Tague-Sutcliffe, Jean. (1995). Measuring Information: An Information Services Perspective. San Diego: Academic Press.[3] (ASIST Award Winner)
• Tague-Sutcliffe, Jean (1992). "An introduction to informetrics". Information Processing & Management 28(1): 1–3. doi:10.1016/0306-4573(92)90087-G
• Tague, Jean & Schultz, Ryan. (1989). "Evaluation of the user interface in an information retrieval system: A model". Information Processing & Management 25(4): 377–389. doi:10.1016/0306-4573(89)90066-6
• Ajiferuke, Isola; Burell, Q.; & Tague, Jean. (1988). "Collaborative coefficient: A single measure of the degree of collaboration in research". Scientometrics 14(5): 421–433. doi:10.1007/BF02017100

Awards

• ASIST Award of Merit, 1996
• ASIST Best Information Science Book Award, 1996

Further Reading

• Nelson, M. (1997). "Jean Tague-Sutcliffe, 1931–1996." JASIST 48(10): 866-866. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199710)48:10<866::AID-ASI2>3.0.CO;2-#
• "Jean Tague-Sutcliffe". Wikipedia. 2026.[4]