Describes the development of a thesaurus for indexing the databases of Engineering Information, Inc., that improved the former precoordinate indexing vocabulary with postcoordinate descriptors and an appropriate set of thesaurus relationships. Problems of incompatibility with old indexing are addressed, and the use of an outside consultant versus…

Describes efforts in supporting information retrieval from OCR (optical character recognition) degraded text. Reports on approaches used in an automatic cataloging and searching contest for books in multiple languages, including a vector space retrieval model, an n-gram indexing method, and a weighting scheme; and discusses problems of Asian…

Provides an overview of robots that retrieve World Wide Web documents and index data and then store it in a database. Nine robot-generated databases are described, including record content, services, search features, and sample search results; and sidebars discuss the controversy about Web robots and other resource discovery tools. (LRW)

Discussion of research into information and text retrieval problems highlights the work with automatic natural language processing (NLP) that is reported in this issue. Topics discussed include the occurrences of nominal compounds; anaphoric references; discontinuous language constructs; automatic back-of-the-book indexing; and full-text analysis.…

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,…

Describes the problems encountered in the design and implementation of a complete, computerized retrieval system for the engineering and architectural drawings of several large Southern California land development firms: developing a specialized cataloging system and format, a customized thesaurus, computer software, and managerial procedures. The…

Surveys the field and literature of geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data representation as it relates to GIS. Highlights include GIS terms, data types, and operations; vector representations and raster, or grid, representations; spatial indexing; elevation data representations; large spatial databases; and problem areas and future…

Discusses problems in access to journals and conference proceedings published in Third World countries, including government roles, the lack of use of information networks due to costs, serials agents' roles, poor distribution and marketing, poor bibliographic control, postal service and telecommunications, language barriers, and lack of…

This paper addresses bibliographic services in the 21st century. The paper begins by reviewing achievements of the past 30 years, including Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC), MARC, International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), and the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2). The cataloging of electronic resources is…

Describes efforts to maintain scholarly and scientific collaboration in France during Germany's occupation (1940-44). The Subgroup for Library Protection, established by the Germans, is explained; the exchange of scientific journals between Germany and France is discussed; and two indexing services for scientific literature are described, one…

Presents an algorithm that automatically extracts words and phrases containing geographic place names or characteristics from a text document and uses them as input to database functions that use spatial reasoning to approximate statistically the geoposition referenced in the text. Preliminary results and future work are discussed. (28 references)…

Describes the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) and the inclusion of abstracting and indexing industry databases in OPACs. Topics addressed include the implications of including abstracting and indexing tape and CD-ROM products in OPACs; the need for standards allowing library systems to communicate with dissimilar CD-ROM products; and computer,…

Describes the design and development of an image database for photographs in the Ulster Museum (Northern Ireland) that used parallelism from a transputer network. Topics addressed include image processing techniques; documentation needed for the photographs, including indexing, classifying, and cataloging; problems; hardware and software aspects;…

Looks at some of the problems of finding digital geographic data in the electronic information infrastructure. Discusses the literature describing trends in organizing information resources in an electronic environment, including spatial information cataloging systems; the paper-based system from which they arose; and new Internet finding tools.…