Reports research undertaken to conceptualize, design, and implement a system for automatic indexing, classification and repositing of "text items," which may be any aggregate of information in English Language on a computer-readable media, in a standard format. (Author)

Term relevance weighting systems in interactive information retrieval are reviewed. An experiment in which information retrieval users ranked query terms in decreasing order of presumed importance prior to actual search and retrieval is described. (Author/KP)

Studied the relationship between the vocabulary of user queries and the vocabulary of documents relevant to the queries, as well as the value of adding to the document description record in a retrieval system keywords from previous queries for which the document had proved useful. Eight references are listed. (FM)

Tests performed on 6,260 titles from 3 machine-readable British National Bibliography files using an entropy based technique for abbreviation of text strings for use as a control code found that more than 94 percent of the titles generated a unique seven character code. Six references and an illustrative example are appended. (EJS)

Discusses several query-processing methods designed to allow the use of relevance weights or thresholds attached to terms and compares them with normal Boolean rules and fuzzy subset theory. Forty-five references are listed. (FM)

Extends Goffman's Indirect Method of Information Retrieval by suggesting a more flexible search strategy which, in its simplified version, appears more effective than the Boolean strategy used in existing information retrieval systems and can be implemented at comparable costs. (Author)

Includes a report on a use study of the Excerpta Medica system. (PF)

Describes a clustering algorithm designed for dynamic data bases and presents an update procedure which maintains an effective document classification without reclustering. The effectiveness of the algorithms is demonstrated for a subset of the Cranfield collection. (Author)

Defines and discusses bibliometrics, particularly as carried out in automated systems. The specific requirements to which data should conform to support bibliometric analysis are detailed and explained, and the Intelligent Gateway of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is described. (15 references) (Author/CLB)

Presents a method for normalizing English document titles so they can be used in the online retrieval of documents: the title expressed by a noun phrase or clause is converted by parsing to a function-expression, which is transformed to a predicate-governor form and then normalized to a standard form. (Author/JD)

Describes the Waller-Kraft "wish list" of desired information retrieval system properties and identifies ambiguities caused by two distinct uses of the phrase "query term weight." Examples of problems arising from the ambiguity are given and a new list is created and discussed. (10 references) (Author/CLB)

Describes an empirical study that was conducted to examine the performance of expert search intermediaries from Chemical Abstracts Service. Highlights include subject-independent and subject-dependent expertise; a model of the use of subject-specific knowledge; and implications for computerized intermediary systems and for training human…

A procedure for adjusting queries to retrieve more documents for a user by automatically selecting and broadening the descriptors from relevant documents is described. Although more computing is required, recall and precision are superior to traditional searching. (KP)

This article explores the growth, origins, technological development, and current activities of bibliographic data bases, and examines the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science national program relative to these aspects. (Author)

An evaluation study of the computerized information services at the University of London is described in terms of successes and setbacks of the project; reactions of users, information officers, librarians and computer staff to the study; and conflicts which arose during implementation. (Author/KP)