In online educational systems we can easily collect and analyze extensive data about student learning. Current practice, however, focuses only on some aspects of these data, particularly on correctness of students answers. When a student answers incorrectly, the submitted wrong answer can give us valuable information. We provide an overview of…

As knowledge brokers, librarians are living in interesting times for themselves and libraries. It causes them to wonder sometimes if the traditional tools like the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system can cope with the onslaught of information. The categories provided do not always seem adequate for the knowledge-discovery habits of…

GreatSchools.org neatly ranks more than 136,000 traditional public, private, and charter schools nationwide on a scale of 1 to 10, based on state test scores. But what often draws readers are the gossipy insider comments posted by parents, students, and teachers, and the star ratings those commenters contribute. The growth of online school rating…

This paper acknowledges and refers to the recent online release and updating of the Teacher Education Group (TEG) bibliography. It offers a brief summary of how and why it was felt necessary to create the resource, what it covers and how it can be used. Broader issues of what skills and prior understanding a naive user of its various search…

Discusses categorization of MARC records, noting problems which arise because formats have not been defined as distinct sets of content designators. Bibliographic and authority record formats, merging of formats into single format, removal of inconsistencies, and criteria for identifying categories of records are considered. Thirty-one references…

Presents an overview of the developments and dilemmas related to the cataloging and classification of maps, addressing the areas of online library systems, cooperative cataloging, descriptive cataloging, subject access, and the improvement of network capabilities. Seventeen references are cited. (FM)

Because 825,000 Internet domain names are assigned and 85,000 new site names are registered each month, the availability of new names is limited. To ease the situation, seven new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) have been proposed for the Internet's domain name system by the International Ad Hoc Committee established by the Internet Assigned…

A meeting was held to explore critical issues and problems related to subject access to online bibliographic records of monographic literature. The 23 researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who attended represented national and research libraries, bibliographic utilities, database vendors, library schools, indexing and abstracting services,…

This examination of abstracting-indexing services for the field of history focuses on Historical Abstracts (HA) and America--History and Life (AHL), and their relationship to the American Bibliographical Center's Subject Profile Index (ABC-SPIndex). The history, scope, selection criteria, and classification arrangements of the two databases are…

Emphasizes class maintenance of National Library of Medicine's bibliographic retrieval file in which maintenance actions (replacement, deletion, addition) reflect yearly changes in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). File maintenance of other authoritative information attached to headings, class maintenance failures, checking class maintenance,…

This paper describes the development of an automated authority control system for the Genealogical Society of Utah, which has large holdings of microfilmed records from many nations, including civil registration, parish registers, local records, and census records. The key function of the library is the identification of people. From the…

At the sixth Dublin Core Metadata Workshop convened in Washington, DC, in November 19998, a work plan was developed to address unresolved issues in resource description. This report summarizes that work plan, highlights the progress that has been made on it and identifies a few significant projects that exemplify this progress. (AEF)

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…

Presents a statistical learning approach to assigning controlled index terms that consists of the learning process and the indexing process. A learning feedback technique is also introduced. Experimental results show that the statistical learning approach and the learning feedback technique are practical means to automatic indexing of controlled…

Protein Annotators' Assistant (PAA) is a software system which assists protein annotators in assigning functions to newly sequenced proteins. PAA employs a number of information retrieval techniques in a novel setting and is thus related to text categorization, where multiple categories may be suggested, except that in this case none of the…