In Memoriam

Jean Tague-Sutcliffe, 1931–1996

In September 1996 we lost a long time promoter of Jean was a leader in the development of informationlibrary and information science: Jean Tague-Sutcliffe. science education by being Dean of Graduate School ofJean was a strong woman of many talents and great energy Library and Information Science at the University ofwhich were not obvious at first glance from her small Western Ontario and helped to build its reputation duringstature. She started her career as a librarian with a degree her tenure. She was always looking to the future and wasfrom McGill University, so she knew about libraries and one of the architects of the school becoming part of thethe practical side of information work. new Faculty of Communications and Open Learning at

However, Jean’s main interest was in developing math- the University of Western Ontario. Jean supervised manyematical models for information retrieval and bibliome- doctoral students, including me, more than anyone elsetrics, an interest which started with her doctoral work at at the University of Western Ontario, mainly because ofCase-Western Reserve University in the 1960s. She was the broad range of interests and her reputation for gettingan empiricist, insisting that models be tested against data things done, including getting doctoral students throughcollected in the field and was always arguing for the their dissertations. She managed to simultaneously setproper use of statistics and goodness-of-fit tests. Her most high standards for her students, as shown by the fourrecent work in this area was the development of statistical ASIS Doctoral awards her students received, and still betests for the TREC series of experiments. She contributed a colleague and friend. Jean’s students are spread aroundmany papers in the area of information retrieval and was the world, many of them as faculty in library and informa-particularly interested in the evaluation aspects. Much tion science.of this research culminated in her ASIS award winning Jean was a long time member and supporter of ASIS,Measuring information: An information services perspec- serving as a Director-at-Large, and received the ASIStive (Tague-Sutcliffe, 1995). The purpose of this book Award of Merit in 1996 and the best information sciencewas to develop a measure of information based not only book award for 1996.on the properties of the message but incorporating proper- Those who worked with Jean soon found out she hadties of the user, especially the information needs of the definite ideas about research (and any other topic thatuser, at the same time as building the theory upon a firm came up in the conversation) and could be very persuasivemathematical foundation. in her arguments, but it was always done in a spirit of

Jean also conducted research on the use of cataloguing debate for the purpose of finding the scientific truth. Inin publications in Canada for the National Library of addition to all these accomplishments, Jean also managedCanada and was involved in studies of career paths of a busy family life with her husband Bill and three chil-senior library administrators, reflecting her contacts with dren: Christina, Fred, and Liza. Jean will be rememberedthe profession. Another indication of Jean’s breadth of by the many friends, colleagues, and family as a re-research was the many agencies that funded her research searcher, educator, and a person who participated in allincluding National Sciences and Engineering Research aspects of life.Council (Canada), Social Sciences and Humanities Re-search Council (Canada), International Development andResearch Council, and National Institute of Science and Mike Nelson

Faculty of Communications and Open LearningTechnology.University of Western OntarioJean developed many international contacts and wasLondon, Ontarioinvolved in numerous international conferences, espe-Canada

cially the Information Retrieval Research and Develop- Email: mnelson@julian.uwo.cament conferences and the International Scientometricsand Bibliometrics conferences which she chaired in 1985

Referenceand 1989, respectively. She was also a founding memberof the ISSI (International Society for Scientometrics and Tague-Sutcliffe, J. (1995). Measuring information: An information ser-

vices perspective. San Diego: Academic Press.Informetrics) .

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. 48(10):866, 1997 CCC 0002-8231/97/100866-01

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