Harold Borko

Harold Borko

Harold Borko (1922-2012) was a US psychologist and information science theorist.

Life

Harold Borko was born on February 1922 in Hew York. He attended the College City of New York from 1939 to 1941, then served in the US Army from 1942 to 1946. In 1948 received a BA degree in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was granted the MA (1949) and a PhD (1952) in psychology from the University of Southern California.

From 1950 to 1956 he was a Captain and psychologist in the US Army Medical Service Corps, then, 1956 to 1957, he was a systems training specialist at the RAND Corporation. In 1957 Borko became associate staff head of the Language Processing and Retrieval unit of the System Development Corporation. He was simultaneously an instructor in psychology at the University of Southern California, 1957-65 and in the School Library Services at UCLA, 1965-68. In 1968 he became a full-time professor in the renamed Graduate School of Library and Information Science (later Department of Information) at UCLA. Borko retired in 1993 and died on April 7, 2012 in Santa Monica, CA.

wanted to understand concepts of underlying retrieval of information from documents with the practical goal of automating the process.

Contributions

Harold Borko was concerned with information retrieval and language processing. He is known for his essay "Information Science: What is it?" in American Documentation 19, no 1 (Jan. 1968): 3-5. [1]. His answer emphasizes the physicality of information: "It is an interdisciplinary science that investigates the properties and behavior of information, the forces that govern the flow and use of information, and the techniques, both manual and mechanical, of processing information for optimal storage, retrieval and dissemination." (p. 5).

Publications

Borko wrote some hundred publications 1961-1995, mostly concerned with information science generally or subject access. Osorio (2014) provides a list and an analysis. [2] More details at Google Scholar [3]

Heavily cited publications by Borko are:

• "Information science: what is it?" American Documentation 19, no 1 (Jan. 1968): 3-5. [4]
• "Automatic document classification" With M. Bernick. Journal of the ACM10, no. 2 (1963): 151-162.(article, 1963)
• Computer applications in the behavioral sciences. Ed. by H. Borko. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1962.
• Abstracting concepts and methods. With C. L. Bernier. New York: Academic Press, 1975.
• Indexing concepts and methods. New York: Academic Press, 1979.

Automated language processing (book, 1967)

• Criteria for acceptable abstracts: a survey of abstracters' instructions (article, 1963)
• The construction of an empirically based mathematically derived classification system (report, 1961).
• Review of criteria used to measure library effectiveness (article, 1972)

Offices

• American Documentation Institute. President, 1966.
• International Federation for Documentation. e U.S. National Committee.

Awards

• American Society for Information Science. Outstanding Information Science Teacher, 1988; Award of Merit, 1994.
• American Federation of Information Processing Societies. Fellow.

Further reading

• Osorio, Nestor L. "A Study of Harold Borko's Contributions to Information Science." Library Philosophy and Practice (2014). [5]
• "Harold Borko (1922-2012): Professor Pioneered Information Studies at UCLA." UCLA GS&IS. [6] [7]

Papers

LOCATION: SDC. No specific plans for deposit but possibly UCLA Special Collections Division.