The study looked into the 307 Koha libraries listed in Breeding's Library Technology Guides. Since all the tag clouds in Koha are user-contributed, their adoption and usage can shed light on the extent to which libraries are supporting user tagging. The research also revealed that public library users are more actively involved in tagging than…

The University of Michigan Library wanted to learn more about the kinds of searches its users were conducting through the "one search" search box on the Library Web site. Library staff conducted two investigations. A preliminary investigation in 2011 involved the manual review of the 100 most frequently occurring queries conducted…

Librarians have long struggled to find user-friendly mediums to provide meaningful information to patrons using bibliographies, pathfinders, and subject guides with varying degrees of success. Content management systems, such as Springshare's LibGuides, have recently been developed to facilitate the creation of online subject guides. Special…

Perhaps the greatest power of folksonomies, especially when set against controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, lies in their capacity to empower user communities to name their own resources in their own terms. This article analyzes the potential and limitations of both folksonomies and controlled vocabularies for…

There are two major parts to this book. The first is a study of bibliographic control of microforms, and the second is an extensive annotated bibliography of microforms. The study included a survey of 190 libraries and showed that local bibliographic control of microforms is often so inadequate that usefulness of the microform collection is…

A report of several comparisons designed to measure the retrieval effectiveness of machined-aided indexing and manual indexing. (Author)

This article provides a brief history of the development of library subject guides (often referred to as pathfinders) from the late 1800s to the present. During this period, subject guides have changed both their focus and format. The needs of academic institutions at the turn of the 20th century were very different than they are today, and…

Speculates on possible avenues for research in the area of bibliographic control, considers questions in the field that need answering, and posits that future research needs to be supported by basic theoretical inquiry. Forty-eight references are cited. (FM)

A study of the coverage of a sample of the geochemical literature by major indexing and abstracting services showed a need for greater cooperation and coordination among the services. (Author/PF)

Introduces a novel order statistic, the "adapted Gini index," and relates it to the conventional form of Bradford's law. An alternative index of dispersion is suggested based on the relative entropy of the frequency distribution. A variety of experimental data is reported. (VT)

The Cranfield Project was done in a laboratory sphere. In a practical situation, it is impossible to determine how many documents are relevant to a certain question. Although in the Cranfield Project collections of different sizes have been used, these collections do not fulfill the requirements that the small collections are randomly taken from…

Review of the 1987 literature on library technical services covers research on: (1) cataloging; (2) subject analysis; (3) authority control; (4) use of the online catalog; (5) acquisitions; and (6) library preservation. The review is limited to studies with a clearly defined research methodology, primarily field studies or survey research. (38…

Problems of indexing and index use lie at the heart of information use. They determine maximum possible use of information systems and sources, affect communication with users, influence the use of retrieved documents, and should form a more important field of research than past history indicates. Previous research provides some clues to user…

Reviews 1979's publications and activities in the fields of general subject analysis, classification, subject headings, and indexing. An extensive list of references is provided. (FM)

Reviews selected research on content-enriched access (including information components such as tables of contents and indexes) in information retrieval systems. It is concluded that well-selected content components and full-text materials in electronic systems must be linked with improved search methodologies, better interfaces, and greater…