Objectives: To compare the performance of a range of search facilities; and to illustrate the execution of a comprehensive literature search for qualitative evidence in social work. Context: Developments in literature search methods and comparisons of search facilities help facilitate access to the best available evidence for social workers.…

Sustainable or organic agriculture aims at harmonizing the efficient production of food with the preservation of the environmental conditions for continuing production in a sustained way. As such, it embodies a set of environmental values that are currently taught and learnt worldwide in specific courses or as part of broader programs or…

Virtual worlds, which allow users to create and interact with content in a 3D, multi-user environment, growing and becoming more integrated with the traditional flat web. However, little is empirically known about the content users create in virtual world and how it can be indexed and searched effectively. In order to gain a better understanding…

Purpose: Presently, searching the internet for learning material relevant to ones own interest continues to be a time-consuming task. Systems that can suggest learning material (learning objects) to a learner would reduce time spent searching for material, and enable the learner to spend more time for actual learning. The purpose of this paper is…

PubMed® is an on-line literature database hosted by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Containing over 21 million citations for biomedical literature--both abstracts and full text--in the areas of the life sciences, behavioral studies, chemistry, and bioengineering, PubMed® represents an important tool for researchers. PubMed® searches return…

This paper compares the subject indexing on articles pertaining to Immanuel Kant, agriculture, and aging that are found simultaneously in Humanities Index, Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) and Periodicals Research II (Micromedia ProQuest), in order to show that there are substantial variations in the depth and quality of indexing in these databases.…

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.

Reports on a quantitative categorical analysis of metadata elements in the Dublin Core, VRA (Visual Resource Association) Core, REACH (Record Export for Art and Cultural Heritage), and EAD (Encoded Archival Description) metadata schemas, all of which can be used for organizing and describing images. Introduces a new schema comparison methodology…

Developed as part of CEN/ISSS Workshop on Learning Technology efforts to improve interoperability between learning resource repositories, the Simple Query Interface (SQI) is an Application Program Interface (API) for querying heterogeneous repositories of learning resource metadata. In the context of the ProLearn Network of Excellence, SQI is used…

Focuses on the retrieval of numeric data from information sources that present special challenges. Describes a new method to deal with the challenge of accessing this special type of data indexed by unfamiliar metadata vocabularies. Extends the entry vocabulary module (EVM) approach to deal with numeric database searching. (AEF)

Online geographic information system (GIS) services are expanding rapidly as private organizations, government agencies, and libraries are developing Web sites that deliver GIS data, graphics, and metadata. Such services are divided into five categories: graphic snapshots, spatial database catalogs and libraries, map generators, map browsers, and…