In Part I of the Session, Network members describe and compare their experiences in utilizing various aspects of the SUNY Retrieval System including "query" cycle, scan statements, author searches, and book files. Machine problems are discussed as well as options on charging for searches, how much information to retrieve, and serving…

Reports on the design and use of a computer system--SORT-AID--to assist bibliographic database searchers in the post-search, analysis phase of their work. Designed for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) installations, this system automatically determines the relevance of downloaded abstracts and provides facilities for editing…

Part One, Automatic Content Analysis contains: "Content Analysis in Information Retrieval;""The 'Generality' Effect and the Retrieval Evaluation for Large Collections;""Automatic Indexing Using Bibliographic Citations" and "Automatic Resolution of Ambiguities from Natural Language Text." Part Two, Automatic…

Four papers are included in Part One of the eighteenth report on Salton's Magical Automatic Retriever of Texts (SMART) project. The first paper: "Content Analysis in Information Retrieval" by S. F. Weiss presents the results of experiments aimed at determining the conditions under which content analysis improves retrieval results as well…

The goal of this project was to find ways of enhancing the efficiency of searching machine readable data bases. Ways are sought to transfer to the computer some of the tasks that are normally performed by the user, i.e., to further automate information retrieval. Four experiments were conducted to test the feasibility of a sequential processing…

A syntax methodology provides a descriptive mechanism to enable machine readable storage and retrieval of numeric data contained in bibliographic documents. The body of this paper treats the nature of "the syntax,""the data element," and the language by which this syntax is expressed. A discussion of the methodology illustrates…

Response time of on-line document retrieval systems is analyzed. Linear and inverted file organizations are considered and their response times are evaluated. (Author)

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)

With the growth of computer technology, bibliographic data bases have developed into sophisticated online research tools. The major data bases are produced by abstracting and indexing (A&I) publishers. Vendors purchase the A&I publishers' machine readable tapes, then sell computer access to the tapes to information based organizations such…

Presents an inexpensive search system which would be very easy to adapt to a library's data processing requirements and would give a smaller library the opportunity to go on-line. (Author/PF)

The paper reports on a series of programs that have been developed at the Moore School to process data-bases, consisting of textual items, and to index and arrange the data items in accordance with an automatically generated classification system. The programs produce the directories and the rearranged data-base on microfilm, where it may be…

The File Organization Project has made available a set of programs which are designed to operate on large files of machine readable bibliographic records. These programs are designed as an instrument for understanding and refining the techniques of bibliographic search. This document discusses four aspects of the system: (1) The retrieval program,…

Reports the findings of a study which examined the question of submitting error reports to OCLC for the purpose of database quality control, and describes ENHANCE, a program that would provide online error correction capability for member libraries. Eight references are cited. (FM)

This exploratory investigation of the process of defining the information needs of computer users and the impact of that process on information retrieval focuses on communication problems. Six sites were visited that used computers to process data or to provide information, including the California Department of Transportation, the California…

Batch mode processing is compared, using cost-effectiveness, with on-line processing for computer-aided searching of chemical abstracts. Consideration for time, need, coverage, and adaptability are found to be the criteria by which a searcher selects a method, and sometimes both methods are used. There is a tradeoff between batch mode's slower…