Presents specifications for software that is designed to support manual development and maintenance of information retrieval thesauri. Evaluation of existing software and design of custom software is discussed, requirements for integration with larger systems and for the user interface are described, and relationships among terms are discussed.…

Describes the Constituent Object Parser (COP), a domain independent syntactic parser developed for use in information retrieval and similar applications. The syntactic structure of natural language entities is discussed, and the mechanisms by which COP handles the problems of conjunctions, ellipsis, and discontinuous constituents are explained.…

Summarizes various linguistic approaches proposed for document analysis in information retrieval environments. Topics discussed include syntactic analysis; use of machine-readable dictionary information; knowledge base construction; the PLNLP English Grammar (PEG) system; phrase normalization; and statistical and syntactic phrase evaluation used…

Describes the design of a classification scheme for reusable software and the implementation of an information retrieval system for reusable software using the SMART system. Highlights include a review of other systems for reusable software; system design; reorganization of software documentation; and system testing, including recall and…

Discusses the interpretation of nominal compounds in the context of natural language processing for information retrieval. Knowledge-intensive algorithms that can successfully interpret compounds found in technical documents are described, and experiments are reported that indicate these algorithms may be unnecessary for improving retrieval…

Discusses methods of textual documentation that can be used for software documentation. Highlights include measurement of text comprehensibility; methods for the measurement of documentation quality, including readability and the Cloze Procedure; tools for the measurement of text readability; and the development of the Reading Measurability…

Provides a conceptual framework for information systems (IS) that can be used in AIDS intervention and prevention (AIP). System components are analyzed, including a database, decision support systems (DSS), expert systems, and software; potential applications of ISAIP are suggested; and an example of a system implemented at Wright State University…

Explores potential of mathematical theory of communication for information science and examines question of how to encode a message at time it is encountered for subsequent recall. Examples of problem, a prototype computer program and experiment, coding as embedding in associational nets, and nature of information are discussed. (Nine references.)…

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) software research and development project described explores information seeking behavior of end-user energy experts and develops software offering tutorials on front-end use of DOE/RECON databases and active help in performing online searches. Software development is described and results of prototype testing…

Discusses what designers do, information they need, and how they might be aided, as background information for developing useful computer-aided decision systems to enhance designers' productivity. It is concluded that effectiveness of computer-assisted design systems depends on the value of the information and the flexibility of the support they…