Given the pace of innovation, not only in the gadget market but in how social media is changing society, the future isn't what it used to be, which is to say, it is not that far off, out of reach, and "gee whiz" tomorrow. The planning horizon has moved closer than ever. And far-off eventualities are here and gone before you know it. In this…

Learning objects (LOs) are digital or non-digital entities used for learning, education or training commonly stored in repositories searchable by their associated metadata. Unfortunately, based on the current standards, such metadata is often missing or incorrectly entered making search difficult or impossible. In this paper, we investigate…

Digital library is commonly seen as a type of information retrieval system which stores and accesses digital content remotely via computer networks. However, the vision of digital libraries is not limited to technology or management, but user experience. This book is an attempt to share the practical experiences of solutions to the operation of…

An unprecedented amount of information encompassing almost every facet of human activities across the world is generated daily in the form of zeros and ones, and that is often the only form in which such information is recorded. A good fraction of this information needs to be preserved for periods of time ranging from a few years to centuries.…

This book aims to facilitate more effective and efficient use of World Wide Web search engines by helping the reader: know the basic structure of the major search engines; become acquainted with those attributes (features, benefits, options, content, etc.) that search engines have in common and where they differ; know the main strengths and…

This paper examines inclusive design delivery through interface design, with a particular focus on access to healthcare resources for seniors. The goal of the project was to examine how seniors are able to access drug information using two different online systems. In the existing retrieval system, pills are identified using a standard search…

On2broker provides brokering services to improve access to heterogeneous, distributed, and semistructured information sources as they are presented in the World Wide Web. It relies on the use of ontologies to make explicit the semantics of Web pages. This paper discusses the general architecture and main components (i.e., query engine, information…

Discusses methods for the retrieval of help knowledge items using graphical tree structures that conform to the hierarchical nature of the tutorial information being referenced. The implementation of "Study Tree Presenter," a special purpose "hypertext shell" that provides such access is described and several samples of screen…

Almost all work on music information retrieval to date has concentrated on music in the audio and event (normally MIDI) domains. However, music in the form of notation, especially Conventional Music Notation (CMN), is of much interest to musically trained persons, both amateurs and professionals, and searching CMN has great value for digital music…

The MARIE project explores knowledge-based information retrieval of captioned images of the kind found in picture libraries and on the Internet. MARIE's five-part approach exploits the idea that images are easier to understand with context, especially descriptive text near them, but it also does image analysis. Experiments show MARIE prototypes…

Discusses some of the theory underlying visual access tools for special collections, introduces a specific World Wide Web application using the technology, and indicates some of the potential of the tool for visual access to images as well as text documents. Appendices include texts of courses used for proximity calculations as well as NASA…

Provides an overview of HYTREM (Hybrid Text-Retrieval Machine), a high-performance, cost-effective text-retrieval machine that handles information in large textual databases. Describes HYTREM's software and hardware design principles and presents an evaluation of system performance in relation to user demand and access versus system capacity. (JMV)

Introduces a prototype system for devising and using a metadata vocabulary for data retrieval, based on a project at the United States Department of Agriculture. A unified information-access system called REEIS (Research, Education, Economics, Extension Information System) is being designed to provide a knowledge base of programs, projects, and…

Suggests that a faceted thesaurus should be used as the basis for organizing a small-scale institutional Web site. Contends that a faceted approach to knowledge organization can make the process of organization less random and more manageable. Reports on an informal survey of three Web sites, underscoring the problems of organization that can…

Special types of prosthetic devices have been designed to support the specific needs of disabled and handicapped computer users in retrieving information. Of particular importance are interfaces based on the use of sound, tactile operations, and gestures. Such interfaces may be used to provide disabled people with access to hypermedia information.…