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identify fewer species, lumping together specimens with fine-grain distinctions, and conversely with splitters. Such individual-level habits or tendencies have also been documented among those filling out death certificates. At this level of individual encoding, it is possible to track decision making and to signal stylistic bias in one direction or another (such capacities exist in several domains, both computerized and manual). The monitoring of relatively simple habits and creating mnemonic tools to correct for them, however, becomes impossible at the level of occupational specialties or large governmental bodies. Collective memories and practices have a different structure and require much more complex representations. Thus, the rule of thumb for designers here would be to try to tailor the complexity of the representation to this issue of organizational scale. |
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5. Match the structure of the information system mediating among diverse participants with information needs, specifically taking mismatches and world-views into account. For example, in the case of the ICD, we have a repository maintained by one group of people "fed" by forms coming in from a widely distributed constituency. There is a good match between the types of information being collected (heterogeneous, nonmatching information structures) and the repository; similarly between the use of forms and the far-flung, disparate encoders of information. Another sort of object or system inserted in the middle of this process could be disastrous. An abstract analytical schema with tightly controlled coding requirements, for example, could severely hamper data collection efforts. |
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With the advent of very large-scale information systems and technologies, increasing concern with electronic integration, and coding and coordination across geographically dispersed groups, the issues presented here become pressing. Our contribution to this set of questions analyzes the ways human organizations have historically reached solutions to this class of problems with and without computing technology, and reflects back into the technology and the organizational world the angle of vision of history, information science, and sociology. On a more practical level, we would like to define as precisely as possible the creation, maintenance, and perhaps destruction of decisions in information practices, especially inter-organizationally. |
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