The University of Michigan Library wanted to learn more about the kinds of searches its users were conducting through the "one search" search box on the Library Web site. Library staff conducted two investigations. A preliminary investigation in 2011 involved the manual review of the 100 most frequently occurring queries conducted…

Researchers that investigate the media's coverage of health have historically relied on keyword searches to retrieve relevant health news coverage, and manual content analysis methods to categorize and score health news text. These methods are problematic. Manual content analysis methods are labor intensive, time consuming, and inherently…

Demonstrates efficiency of preparation of query description using semantic analyser method based on analysis of semantic structure of documents in field of automatic indexing. Results obtained are compared with automatic indexing results performed by traditional methods and results of indexing done by human indexers. Sample terms and codes are…

Relative effectiveness of indexing using full-text or less than full-text was tested using non-Boolean, chaining type of file structure and searching method. Indexing was done using titles, abstracts, full-text, references, and various combinations; Goffman's indirect method of information retrieval was used to structure and search file.…

This review takes a critical approach in summarizing and evaluating the methodology and scope of catalog use studies, with emphasis on the subject approach to card catalog searching. Subject access is defined in this report; however, the process of subject searching, described repeatedly in library literature, has been based upon common sense…

Discussion of the information-seeking behavior of humanists focuses on a study that investigated the efficacy of following bibliographic references from documents already known. Topics include the nature of humanities research; vocabulary control and indexing; subject-based literature searches; seed documents; relevance; retrieval based on…

The Comparative Systems Laboratory (CSL) proposed to deal with the problems of testing retrieval systems by examining a number of processes involved in such systems, with particular attention to the human factor. It is hoped that the results of the project will be useful in refining methodologies for experimentation with information retrieval (IR)…

Discussion of research in the humanities focuses on the "MLA International Bibliography," the primary database for literary research. Highlights include comparisons to research in the sciences; humanities vocabulary; database search techniques; contextual indexing; examples of searches; thesauri; and software. (43 references) (LRW)