Discusses the problem of enhancing the speed of Huffman decoding of compressed data. Topics addressed include the Huffman decoding tree; multibit decoding; binary string mapping problems; and algorithms for solving mapping problems. (22 references) (LRW)

The imminent societal imperative, management of knowledge as a social resource, appears to be a viable new framework for defining major roles and tasks for theory-oriented work in information science. (Author)

Discusses the need to incorporate uncited influences, as well as cited, in citation analysis and the study of citer motivation. The discussion is illustrated with an example of the process of deciding which influences to cite and which not to cite. (eight references) (CLB)

Proposes a mathematical model to explain the observed concentration or diversity of nominal classes in information retrieval systems. The Lorenz Curve is discussed, Information Production Process (IPP) is explained, and a heuristic explanation of circumstances in which the model might be used is offered. (30 references) (LRW)

Reviews the problems involved in citation analysis and discusses the possible magnitude of error involved when these problems are overlooked or ignored. Problems identified include formal influences not cited, biased citing, informal influences not cited, self citing, different types of citations, variations in citation rate, and technical…

Describes the development of a prototype system to analyze the ambiguity and complexity of cataloging rules to aid the quality control of cataloging standards. Highlights include AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition) rules, syntactic structure of rules, rule parsing, rule templates, relationships between rules, examples, and further…

High-level scientific research in the information sciences is illustrated by sampling of recent discoveries involving adaptive information processing strategies, computer and information systems, centroid scaling, economic growth of computer and communication industries, and information flow in biological systems. Relationship of information…

Discusses user preferences for the representation, interpretation, and measurement of the relevance or usefulness of retrieved documents. Highlights include measurement of user judgments on documents; distance between rankings; measures of retrieval effectiveness; normalized performance measure; and the relationship of distance-based measures to…

Distinguishes between document-oriented and user-oriented indexing and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of request-oriented and automated indexing. Request-oriented indexing is difficult to implement with human, a priori indexing. Automated indexing can be tailored to individual requests, but most research in this area focuses on global…

Reviews methods of text segmentation for Chinese text retrieval systems, including single character-based approaches and multicharacter-based approaches; discusses problems of Chinese text segmentation, including morphological complexities, ambiguity of segmentation, and natural language parsing problems; and suggests further research. (Contains…

Describes a study that was designed to document through citation analysis the intellectual development of research on organizations for the years 1972-84. Organizational theory and organizational behavior are highlighted, the use of author cocitation analysis is explained, and future research is suggested. (17 references) (LRW)

Describes early Hebrew citation indexes, both embedded and book-length, and discusses terminological variation, format, precision of locators, the order of index entries and assumption of user knowledge, knowledge of the compilers, and recommendations for further research. (59 references) (LRW)

Investigates performance of online searchers using a prototype expert system that automatically reformulates queries to improve results and ranks retrieved passages to speed identification of relevant information. Results indicated that the system significantly reduced the number of queries needed, produced marginally significant improvements in…

Reports on a study on the use of quotations in 12 scholarly books in 4 subject areas--the arts, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology. Data are presented on length of quotations and numbers of references. The need for research to identify patterns among quotations that would facilitate design of improved indexing and searching…

Explores the theory of psychological relevance and its relationship to information retrieval, and provides an extended example. Topics discussed include information need, the search process, the nature of information, topical relevance, relevance judgments and retrieval testing, information retrieval and bibliometrics, and suggestions for further…