Discussion of bibliographic databases and the structure of records focuses on the structure of education information based on publications of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Faceted design is discussed, and mandatory and optional fields in education database design are considered. (Contains 16 references.) (LRW)

Describes a scheme in the United Kingdom that coordinates geochemistry publications with a computerized geochemistry database. The database comprises not only data published in the journals but also the remainder of the pertinent data set. The discussion covers the database design; collection, storage and retrieval of data; and plans for future…

Describes research aimed at investigating dynamically evolving database environments and corresponding schemata that allow storage and manipulation of variable length data, a variable number of fields per record, variable length records and fields, and dynamically defined objects. Proposes a new framework for dynamic database environments.…

Describes collection-development strategies for use in the identification, evaluation, and selection of numeric-data resources. Addresses three primary issues: the delineation of collecting scope and organizational role; the identification of potentially relevant data resources; and the evaluation of those resources in accordance with objective,…

Briefly describes a project that created an archive of electronic versions of published text. The procedures used to access the archives are described and the policies of the archive for proper use of electronically delivered documents by scholars and libraries are discussed. (5 references) (CLB)

Information extraction (IE) is the extraction and recording of information about a prespecified set of entities, relations, or events from natural language texts in structured representations called templates. This article provides an overview of IE from the 1960s to the present, discusses techniques, describes applications, and highlights future…

An n-gram is a string of characters, usually adjacent, extracted from a section of continuous text that can be used in spelling error detection and correction, query expansion, information retrieval, dictionary search, text compression, and language identification applications. This article provides an introduction to the use of n-grams in textual…

Explains the efforts of the ICSTI (International Council for Scientific and Technical Information) Group on Interdisciplinary Searching to identify and describe problems of interdisciplinary searching and to propose solutions. Problems are summarized in six areas: database coverage and technical content, bibliographic information, textual content,…

Indexing is the preprocessing of information to enable its retrieval, ranging from classification-based (precoordinate) to keyword searching (postcoordinate) approaches. This article describes a framework for modelling information retrieval systems in terms of sets of objects, relationships, and functions and discusses the application of indexing…

Presents a user-oriented interface for generalized informetric analysis and demonstrates how informetric calculations can be specified through advanced data modeling techniques. Topics include bibliographic data; online information retrieval systems; citation networks; query interface; impact factors; data restructuring; and multi-level…

Considers the future of copyright in an electronic environment due to the ease with which materials can be copied. Discusses relevant legal cases; reproductive rights organizations; the role of contracts; databases; European Union initiatives; and conflict of laws. Concludes that increased owner-user cooperation is needed if copyright is to…

Describes the organization of the House of Commons Library which provides information, documentation, and research services to its members and outlines the history of the Parliamentary On-Line Information System (POLIS). The physical description of POLIS, indexing practices, users, and the Library's subject thesaurus are discussed. Eight…

Describes a project at the Ministry of Health Library and Documentation Centre in Malawi, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), that changed the role of the library from information collector to producer of information through the use of desktop publishing and the creation of CD-ROM databases. (LRW)

Discusses the design of interfaces for online systems and suggests requirements that must be met to offer maximum aid to inexperienced users. Highlights include the online search process, user data, query processing, database descriptors, semantic links, multilingual processing, search strategies, and distributed systems. A 20-page bibliography…

Discusses the use of transaction logging in Okapi-related projects to allow search algorithms and user interfaces to be investigated, evaluated, and compared. A series of examples is presented, illustrating logging software for character-based and graphical user interface systems, and demonstrating the usefulness of relational database management…