Saracevic was an expert on the evaluation of information retrieval systems; the notion of relevance in information science; and the human aspects in human-computer interaction in information retrieval.
SC&I Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Library and Information Science Tefko Saracevic, a world-renowned expert on human information behavior, human-computer interaction from the human viewpoint, modeling interaction processes in information retrieval, and the concept of relevance in relation to information and information systems, has died.
A full-time member of the SC&I Library and Information Science Department faculty for 25 years, Saracevic joined Rutgers in 1985. In 1991 he was promoted to Professor II (then the highest academic rank at the university). From 2003 to 2006 he served as an associate dean at SC&I. In 2010 he transitioned to emeritus status, but for years afterward he still taught an online Digital Libraries course.
Saracevic conducted research and published widely on the testing and evaluation of information retrieval systems; the concept of relevance in information science; human aspects in human-computer interaction in information retrieval; user and use studies in information science and librarianship; studies of user-derived value of information and library services; evaluation of digital libraries; and analysis of Web queries as submitted to search engines.
As principal investigator or co-principal he received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes for Health, Department of Education, Council for Library Resources, the Rockefeller Foundation, UNESCO, and several other national and international organizations. His results were widely reported and cited.
Active internationally, particularly in relation to information problems in developing countries, for over a decade Saracevic was involved with the Rockefeller Foundation in design, deployment, and evaluation of compact high-quality, low-cost medical information systems in under-resourced areas around the world.
He was a visiting professor at four universities abroad and he also worked and consulted with a number of international organizations on development and evaluation of information systems and libraries.
Saracevic presented papers at international meetings in 43 countries, and was an invited keynote speaker at over a dozen international conferences. He also served as co-founder and co-chair, from 2000 to 2014, of the biennial conference and course Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) held in Zadar, Croatia.
Saracevic was active in a number of professional associations. He was the president of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS, now ASIS&T) in 1991. He received the Gerard Salton Award for Excellence in Research, by the Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, Association for Computing Machinery (SIGIR/ACM) in 1997; the ASIS Award of Merit (highest award given by the Society) in 1995; the 1989 Best Paper Award in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science; the ASIS Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 1985; and the Rutgers University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research in 1991. In 1994 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Zagreb, Croatia; he was granted a second Fulbright scholarship for 1999.
As of 2024, he had received 5,818 citations in the Scopus database (a prominent abstract and citation database of scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings). In Google Scholar (with a broader coverage of all kinds of documents in addition to journals) he received 16,462 citations. In a histogram of citations from papers in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST & predecessor names), done by the late Eugene Garfield from the Web of Science for years 1956-2006 and involving 4605 authors, he ranked first in citations to his work both in articles in the Journal (Total Local Citation Score) and in articles globally from that Journal (Total Global Citation Score).
Saracevic was also a member of a number of editorial boards. From 1985 to 2008 he was Editor-in Chief of Information Processing & Management, an international journal published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Regular reviewer for a number of journals and granting agencies.
Saracevic studied electrical engineering at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, from 1952-1957. He completed his master’s degree in 1962 and his Ph.D. in 1970 in studies in information science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He taught and conducted research at Case Western until 1985, when he moved to Rutgers.
The LIS Department faculty joins the scholarly community around the world in remembering our cherished colleague, Prof. Tefko Saracevic. We anticipate sharing further remembrances in the coming days and weeks, from those who knew him best.
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