Discusses the use of natural language processing to help organize multimedia data. The MARIE system, which uses captions to embody the classificatory information and heuristic advice necessary to search a database of photographs, is explained. Advantages include improved speed of access and the ability for improved user interaction. (Contains 21…

Organized from the viewpoint of information retrieval theory, this review addresses issues of chemical information representation, comparison and matching, and retrieval strategies. Additional topics include similarity and clustering, visualization, and molecular diversity. Trends in research and application are identified, and gaps in the…

Describes policies formulated by the Chinese government that use information technology to facilitate the development of scientific and technical information activities. Highlights include online information retrieval; the construction of databases, including Chinese language, numeric, and Chinese trade and technology databases; the development of…

Different kinds of pictorial databases are described with respect to aims, user groups, search possibilities, storage, and distribution. Some specific examples are given for databases used for the following purposes: (1) labor markets for artists; (2) document management; (3) telling a story; (4) preservation (archives and museums); (5) research;…

In 1988 Mann Library at Cornell University proposed to develop a computer system that would support interactive access to significant electronic files in agriculture and the life sciences. This system was titled the Interactive Numeric Files Retrieval System (INFeRS). This report describes how project goals were met and it presents the project's…

Addresses the drudgery of entering long datasets at the keyboard before being able to begin each chapter of a book. Suggests that the publishers of statistics books make the datasets available for people to download onto their computers over the World Wide Web. (AIM)

Discusses a variety of ways that teachers at all levels are using databases in their classrooms, how students respond to working with databases, the relationship of databases to inquiry learning, and how databases can be integrated into the curriculum. (RS)

Outlines techniques used in the context of a sixth grade science class to teach database structure and search strategies for science using the AppleWorks program. Provides templates and questions for class and element databases. (Author/YP)

Describes the creation of an interactive retrieval system for electronic numeric files that was developed at Cornell University's (New York) Mann Library. Topics discussed include user characteristics; special data characteristics; quality control; software; hardware; data preparation; database design and construction; interface; subject indexing…

Examines the use of various statistical techniques for generating domain-oriented multiword vocabulary terms for natural language database systems. Conclusions show the vocabulary clustering effect should be considered when making significance calculations and that a simple ratio of subject matter relative frequency to total sample relative…

This document describes a study that designed, developed, and evaluated the Pennsylvania school-district database program for use by educational decision makers. The database contains current information developed from data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and describes each of the 500 active school districts in the state. PEP…

This article reports results of a case study of text-based online and CD-ROM databases that identified design characteristics that are important to high school students' use for higher-level learning as well as for information access and retrieval. Implications for the design of databases are suggested. (Contains 62 references.) (LRW)

Examines how informetric characteristics of information retrieval (IR) system databases can be used to help system designers decide what type of file structures would provide the best performance. The development of appropriate models describing database contents is highlighted in this first part of a two-part study. (30 references) (LRW)

Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) aims at describing educational resources in order to allow better reusability and retrieval. In this article we show how additional inference rules allows us to derive additional metadata from existing ones. Additionally, using these rules as integrity constraints helps us to define the constraints on LOM elements,…

Five papers from the sessions of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions 1992 conference on classification, indexing, and cataloging are presented. Three papers deal with knowledge classification as it relates to database design, as it is practiced in India, and in a worldwide context. The remaining two papers focus…