ABSTRACT
Information Science, regardless of how it may be defined, must be concerned with the phenomenon of communication, namely the process by which information is conveyed among the members of a population, be they living organisms, devices or some combination of these. Weaver has suggested three broad levels of communication problems. (1) These are:
The Technical or Engineering problem dealing with the accuracy with which the symbols of communication are transmitted.
The Semantic or Language problem dealing with the precision with which the transmitted symbols convey the desired information.
The Effectiveness or Relevance problem dealing with the effectiveness with which the received information affects conduct in the desired way.
Level 1 basically deals with signal transmission and noise, but level 2 must deal primarily with the ambiguous notion of meaning whereas level 3 must deal with the equally ambiguous notion of relevance, since the precision with which the transmitted symbols convey the desired information depends on their meaning to both sender and receiver and the effectiveness with which the received information affects behavior depends on its relevance to the receiver.