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)

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)

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)

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)

Describes a computerized information retrieval system that uses three agglomerative hierarchic clustering algorithms--single link, complete link, and group average link--and explains their implementations. It is noted that these implementations have been used to cluster a collection of 12,000 documents. (LRW)

Describes traditional legal information retrieval systems--Juris, Lexis, Westlaw--and several new rule-based, knowledge-based, legal knowledge reasoning, and analytical legal information systems--Waterman and Peterson's Legal Decisionmaking System, Hafner's Legal Information Retrieval System, McCarty's TAXMAN, and the deBessonet representation of…

Proposes a microprocessor-based architecture that makes large use of parallelism both in processing and in retrieval operations. The proposed system consists of three functional blocks: the query processor, simple query executers, and the answer composer. Twenty-one references are listed. (FM)

Describes a method of iterative searching that uses local metrical clustering in the formulation of additional searches by producing searchonyms, terms which are synonymous to keywords in the context of a single query. The method was applied to a database containing Hebrew and Aramaic text. Seven references are listed. (FM)

Describes an online microcomputer-based system called Reference Librarian Enhancement System (REFLES) which stores factual information. Examples of data in the system and uses of the service are presented, as well as considerations for the future. Twelve (12) references are included. (Author/BK)

Explains, with supporting figures and flowcharts of programing logic, two search strategies introduced to the MORPHS System since 1976: one that employs the normal Boolean operators in strings without bracketing or in the form of marked steps, and one that treats a string of keywords as a compound word. (Author/JD)