The need to educate a competitive workforce is a global problem. In the US, for example, despite billions of dollars spent to improve the educational system, approximately 35% of students never finish high school. The drop rate among some demographic groups is as high as 50-60%. At the college level in the US only 30% of students graduate from…

Statistical clustering is critical in designing scalable image retrieval systems. This paper presents a scalable algorithm for indexing and retrieving images based on region segmentation. The method uses statistical clustering on region features and IRM (Integrated Region Matching), a measure developed to evaluate overall similarity between images…

This paper discusses a generic query tool that enables an end user to query a metadata store through filters that impose search criteria on attributes. The Metadata Query Tool (MQT) is generic in the sense that it dynamically creates its user interface, based on configuration files that define the metadata scheme and the query functionalities.…

Because the complex link and node structure awaiting users can lead them into becoming lost in hyperspace and cause them cognitive overload, navigating the hypertext system is often not an easy task, especially for novices. They may have difficulty perceiving a structure of an entire system, locating specific information, or using a navigational…

The Open Video Project is an ongoing effort to develop an open source digital video collection that can be used by the information retrieval, digital library, and digital video research communities and ultimately serve a broader audience. Discusses the challenges of compiling and maintaining such a collection. Describes the user interface…

Findings from a study of users' multitasking searches on Web search engines include: multitasking searches are a noticeable user behavior; multitasking search sessions are longer than regular search sessions in terms of queries per session and duration; both Excite and AlltheWeb.com users search for about three topics per multitasking session and…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to develop research methods to compare the effectiveness of two video browsing interface designs, or surrogates--one static (storyboard) and one dynamic (slide show)--on two distinct information seeking tasks (gist determination and object recognition). (AEF)

This paper describes an evaluation of the Kea automatic keyphrase extraction algorithm. Tools that automatically identify keyphrases are desirable because document keyphrases have numerous applications in digital library systems, but are costly and time consuming to manually assign. Keyphrase extraction algorithms are usually evaluated by…

This paper describes basic types of World Wide Web pages and presents design criteria for page layout based on principles of visual literacy. Discussion focuses on pages that present information in the following styles: billboard; directory/index; textual; and graphics. Problems and solutions in Web page construction are explored according to…

Includes abstracts of 18 special interest group (SIG) sessions. Highlights include natural language processing, information science and terminology science, classification, knowledge-intensive information systems, information value and ownership issues, economics and theories of information science, information retrieval interfaces, fuzzy thinking…

Describes the Gateway to Educational Materials Project (GEM) at the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology at Syracuse University. Explicates the GEM metadata element set and how GEM metadata is created. Discusses the syntactic binding of GEM metadata and the mechanisms for its distribution. Concludes with a brief discussion of existing…

In the case of digital collections of text, provision of a simple unified user interface faces several challenges, among them a tension between intellectual adequacy and simplicity of access. Examines the question of how to allow cross-collection searching and display while preserving the variation in texts and their markup and points to…

Summer 1995 saw the release, with considerable media attention, of draft versions of Sun Microsystems' Java computer programming language and the HotJava browser. Java has been heralded as the latest "killer" technology in the Internet explosion. Sun Microsystems and numerous companies including Microsoft, IBM, and Netscape have agreed…

This paper focuses on the development, adoption, and integration of resource discovery, knowledge management, and/or knowledge sharing interfaces such as interactive portals, and the use of the library's World Wide Web presence to increase the availability and usability of information services. The introduction addresses changes in library…

Reports on the methodology used in an experiment whose objective was to discover whether information seekers display experimentally demonstrable preferences for index terms with particular properties, and if so, to analyze those preferences. Results provide strong evidence that it is possible to measure human preference for index terms.…