Even though the concept of information literacy typically embraces an idea of a complete participation in an information community, its definitions have tended to underline the phases of seeking, searching and evaluation instead of creating information. Shortcomings of information creation can, however, explain many of the difficulties of finding…

Like seemingly everyone else connected to K12 education, vendors that offer student information systems are being called upon to do more with less. Where past generations of these systems focused on nuts and bolts such as time, attendance and behavioral issues, the latest generation has created--and drawn inspiration from--districts' desires for…

Agroforestry (AF)/forestry is no longer an isolated field, with so many developmental activities having links with this sector, and thus the information required to be handled by the researchers all over the world has increased exponentially. This article discusses a website that was developed by the National Research Centre for Agroforestry…

This article presents the results of a comprehensive survey of integrated library system (ILS) vendors conducted by the author and commissioned by "Computers in Libraries" CIL. The survey was intended to: (1) provide an up-to-date comparison of functionality currently available in ILS products; (2) provide a comparison of support services…

Academic libraries customize, support, and provide access to myriad information systems, each with complex graphical user interfaces. The number of possible information entry points on an academic library Web site is both daunting to the end-user and consistently challenging to library Web site designers. Faced with the challenges inherent in…

This presentation at a seminar for library staff and students describes the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system as an information system designed to provide users with ready access to primarily English-language literature dealing with education by establishing a database, publishing abstracting journals, and reproducing…

Examines previous research on keyword-search techniques and evaluates a keyword classification scheme. Compiled a list of 1056 management information systems (MIS) keywords from 14,676 articles in 27 (MIS) journals and compared it to an existing list (Barki). Concludes that a comprehensive keyword-classification system is needed for enhanced MIS…

This article reports, that in a growing number of districts, school leaders are ranking the threat of sex offenders-some of them the parents of enrolled students--as one of their chief student-safety concerns. That threat, they say, is a primary reason for investing thousands of dollars in a Web-based tracking system that tells school officials if…

The Dublin Core (DC) Element Set and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol have provided a solid foundation for the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) framework. More precision is needed in community-specific aspects of resource description than is offered by DC, and many of the potential participants in OLAC do not have the technical…

This article reports on our experiences in providing interoperability between the ARIADNE knowledge pool system (KPS) (Duval, Forte, Cardinaels, Verhoeven, Van Durm, Hendrickx et al., 2001) and several other heterogeneous learning object repositories and referatories.

The last installment in a three part series compares commands and features for accessing and manipulating the results obtained from the DIALOG and QUESTEL information systems. Highlights include enhancements to syntax and defaults, options for output arrangement and retrieval, reformatting of selected data, memory, unique features, and examples.…

This second of a three-part series compares search features (i.e., truncation symbols, boolean operators, proximity operators, phrase searching, save searches) of two databases providing legal information. Search tips concerning charges and effective searching and tables listing functions of commands and proximity operators for both databases are…

An n-gram is a string of characters, usually adjacent, extracted from a section of continuous text that can be used in spelling error detection and correction, query expansion, information retrieval, dictionary search, text compression, and language identification applications. This article provides an introduction to the use of n-grams in textual…

Describes microcomputer based search system that provides access to selected portions of the ERIC database using a simplified and guided format and serves as inexpensive tool to teach concepts of online searching and information retrieval. Getting started, decision and command lines, help instructions, and availability of database disks are…

Discusses the characteristics of information retrieval software and examines several capabilities of two systems, SIRE and ZyINDEX--creating a database, indexing the database, maintaining the database, and searching the database. Each system's strengths and weaknesses in bibliographic record and full text applications are analyzed. A glossary is…