Presents the architecture and algorithms behind Matchsimile, an approximate string matching lookup tool designed for extracting person and company names from large texts. Highlights include name formation rules, defining the search problem, system architecture, recognizing pattern words, recognizing whole patterns, and performance. (Author/MES)

Presents the first year's results of a continuing project to monitor the availability of software of relevance for literacy education purposes. Concludes there is an enormous amount of software available for use by teachers of reading and literacy--whereas drill-and-practice software is the largest category of software available, large numbers of…

This paper reports the findings from a field study of legal research in a first-tier law school and on the resulting redesign of XLibris, a next-generation e-book. The report first characterizes a work setting in which an e-book was expected to be a useful interface for reading and otherwise using a mix of physical and digital library materials,…

This study applied evaluation techniques to "Cesar" (a hypermedia learning environment for deaf children based on electronic stories) and "Hyper-Book" (an electronic book based on the paper book metaphor and designed to be part of an electronic library). It also identifies steps that can be used in evaluating electronic books…

First in a continuing series of reports on trends in marketing and publication of software for literacy education, a study explored the development of a database to track the trends and reported on trends seen in 1995. The final version of the 1995 database consisted of 1011 software titles, 165 of which had been published in 1995 and 846…

Reports results of a United Kingdom-based mail survey of database users, CD-ROM producers, and hosts to assess trends and views concerning documentation in machine-readable form. Cost, convenience, and ease of use of print manuals are cited as reasons for the reluctance to switch to machine-readable documentation. Sample surveys are included.…

Describes an experiment in which presentation size and text length is varied in a HyperCard application. Students performed a fact-retrieval task from a reference handbook. No interaction is found between these two independent variables. Performance is significantly better for the longer texts, but no significant difference is found for the two…

Examines instances of "high" literacy, literate thinking, among elementary school students working with common computer software during their normal school day. Seven forms of engagement emerged to categorize students' work, and these were arranged in order of complexity: disengagement, unsystematic engagement, frustrated engagement,…

Describes a research project conducted at the University of Oulu (Finland) that applied hypermedia in designing, delivering, and using technical documents in electronic form to create interactive electronic technical manuals. A practical model for computer-aided reading supports (CARS) for technical documents is proposed based on users' needs.…

"SeeWord" is a highly configurable word processing environment, which assists dyslexic users in producing and reading text. Three prototypes of the software were developed and evaluated. The third was used in an experimental study with six dyslexic school pupils. Research showed five out of the six, aged 14-16, years benefited from use of…

Presents research on using scanner technology to capture the contents pages of collective monographs, extract bibliographic information, and process this information with a standardized language, such as SGML, for tagging electronic documents. Results confirmed the feasibility of developing a system to automatically enrich records in online…