Discusses the inclusion of contextual information in indexing and retrieval systems to improve results and the ability to carry out text analysis by means of linguistic knowledge. Presents research that investigated whether discourse variables have an impact on information and retrieval and classification algorithms. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of the failure of individual keywords to identify conceptual content of documents in retrieval systems highlights Metric Similarity Modeling, a method for creating vector space representation of documents based on modeling target interdocument similarity values. Semantic relatedness, latent semantic indexing, an indexing and retrieval…

Examines the retrieval effectiveness of five hierarchical clustering methods (single link, complete link, group average, Ward's method, and weighted average) as a function of indexing exhaustivity with four test collections. Evaluations of retrieval effectiveness are based on three measures of optimal retrieval performance. (Author/LRW)

High impact astronomy journals were identified by using a methodology called Discipline-Contribution Score (DCS). The DCS algorithm was used to track citations of 33 nonrecognized astronomy journals, as well as to measure contributions to astronomy by multisubfield physics and multidisciplinary journals. (JKP)

Presents a modification function for weights of descriptors for documents in fuzzy retrieval systems which includes some desirable properties that are lacking in the model proposed by Choros and Danilowicz in their study on relative indexing. (MBR)

Describes exploratory experiments in evaluating and improving a thesaurus through studying its effect on retrieval. A formula was developed to measure the conceptual distance between queries and documents encoded as sets of thesaurus terms. Comparison to the performance of people judging conceptual distance shows that the formula accurately…

Presents principles for determining profile of a system user based on analysis of co-occurrence of index terms in queries and pertinent documents. A procedure for determining index term weights, the information value of which depends on the degree of homogeneity of system users, is introduced. Three references are cited. (EJS)

Highlights semantic links and shows how the semantic content of hypertext links can be used for information retrieval. Discussion includes indexing and retrieval algorithms that exploit link content and node content; retrieval strategies exploiting semantic links, including conventional retrieval and constrained spreading activation techniques;…

Describes an indexing technique based on overlapping word fragments as reference strings that are linked in a directed graph structure which makes possible exact match-, partial match-, and masked-partial match-retrieval and indicates search strategies for each case. Eight figures, two tables, and nine references are provided. (RBF)

Discussion of the information needs of medical professionals and researchers focuses on the architecture of a Web portal designed to integrate advanced searching and indexing algorithms, an automatic thesaurus, and self-organizing map technologies to provide searchers with fine-grained results. Reports results of evaluation of spider algorithms…

Presents a theoretical rationale for employing a form of information retrieval algorithm that helps searchers better navigate through large document collections by continually revising probability estimates for document subsets. The algorithm avoids assumptions of index term independence and predicts relevance more accurately with increasing…

Discusses the feasibility of building intelligent rule- or weight-based algorithms into general-purpose software for interactive thesaurus navigation. Previous research is surveyed; practical investigations in thesaurus navigation and query enhancement are described; and implications for automatic or intelligent thesaurus navigation are…

Discusses methods of weighting of descriptors in document search patterns together with the concept of relative indexing and conditions which should be satisfied by descriptor weight. A procedure for modifiying document search patterns based on users' informational needs and opinions is outlined, and examples are given. Sixteen references are…

The twenty-second in a series, this report describes research in information organization and retrieval conducted by the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. The report covers work carried out during the period summer 1972 through summer 1974 and is divided into four parts: indexing theory, automatic content analysis, feedback…

STITE (Scientific and Technical Information Transfer for Education) is basically a system to interface between science information and the science learner. As such STITE acts as a link between STIC (Science and Technology Infromation Centers) and LIS (Learning Information Systems). In this second progress report the internal knowledge of STITE is…