Introduction: This paper reports an exploratory study examining how users participate in social tagging activities in a scholarly digital library environment to learn about their motivations, behaviour, and practices. Method: This study was conducted in two phases: a survey to investigate usage and attitudes of social tagging tool, and a…

Analyzes the nature of Boolean information retrieval in relation to the discrete weights of query terms, examines assigned weights from an approach involving thresholds, and generates an evaluation mechanism which allows the user to attach a threshold to the query term. Thirteen references are listed. (FM)

Analyzes a study of the effect of controlled variations in indexing vocabulary size on retrieval performance, using the Cranfield 200 and 1400 test collections. Sets of variable-length character strings were tested, in an application of the Cluster Hypothesis and in a series of linear associative retrieval experiments. (Author/SW)

The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system was used to identify 1,734 documents on program evaluation methodology. Attempts to further characterize these documents by subject were only partially successful because of the lack of sufficient depth of indexing and design constraints of the computer system. Attempts to characterize…

Presents results of simulations that were conducted to test the effects of errors in estimation of individual term probabilities on the performance of a probabilistic information retrieval (PIR) system. Assigning index terms to documents is described; an information retrieval system called Helpnet is explained; and relevance, ranking, and…

Reports on a theoretical model of structured document indexing and retrieval based on the Dempster-Shafer Theory of Evidence. Highlights include passage retrieval, hypertext, relevance, information needs, implementation of the model, an evaluation scheme designed to test the model's effectiveness, and results of experiments that investigated…

The current state of information retrieval (IR) evaluation is reviewed with criticisms directed at the available test collections and the research and evaluation methodologies used, including precision and recall rates for online searches and laboratory tests not including real users. Automatic text retrieval systems are also discussed. (32…

Explores current research on indexing and ranking as retrieval functions of search engines on the Web. Highlights include measuring search engine stability; evaluation of Web indexing and retrieval; Web crawlers; hyperlinks for indexing and ranking; ranking for metasearch; document structure; citation indexing; relevance; query evaluation;…

The following topics are included in this document: (1) evaluation of plans for implementation of new systems; (2) macroevaluation of document retrieval systems; (3) microevaluation of retrospective searching; (4) evaluation of document acquisition functions; evluation of indexing and indexing languages; (5) evaluation of document screening; (6)…

These two articles discuss clustering structure in the Cystic Fibrosis Document Collection, which is derived from the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE file. The exhaustivity of four subject representations and two citation representations is examined, and descriptor-weight thresholds and similarity thresholds are used to compute…

Discusses the search option on Web sites and explains how to develop a search engine. Highlights include search options, including Boolean operators, graphical interface, and language; platform and server compatibility; indexing; metadata; XML; customization options; installation and configuration; evaluation; usability; and cost. (LRW)

The first task of the study was to develop valid, short-cut methods of indexing the narrative content of evaluation reports that would extract the differentiating information contained in evaluative comments simply, reliably, and with as good classification accuracy as the longer initial procedure. In the second task, the original inter-indexer…

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)

A measure of indexing consistency is developed based on the concept of 'fuzzy sets'. It assigns a higher consistency value if indexers agree on the more important terms than if they agree on less important terms. Measures of the quality of an indexer's work and exhaustivity of indexing are also proposed. Experimental data on indexing consistency…

Almost overnight, the World Wide Web has made the solution of "classic" information retrieval problems a pressing commercial goal. The various information retrieval solutions being offered on the Web are quite familiar to the librarian. The various Web search sites make use of "traditional" inverted indexes, manual indexing,…