Proposes an effective term suggestion approach to interactive Web searches. Explains a log-based approach to relevant term extraction and term suggestion where relevant terms suggested for a user query are those that co-occur in similar query sessions from search engine logs rather than in the retrieved documents. (Author/LRW)

The results of an experiment simulating a library catalog search indicated that a relation exists between the lexical content load of the text, used to define the search topic, and the number of query terms generated by a group of experimental subjects (college students). (21 references) (Author)

Reports on an experiment that examined whether thesaurus terms, related to query in a specified semantic way (synonyms, narrower terms, related terms, or broader terms) could be identified as having a more positive impact on retrieval effectiveness when added to a query through automatic query expansion. (Contains 54 references.) (Author/LRW)

The performance of a selective dissemination of information service based on computer scanning of Nuclear Science Abstracts tapes was compared with a current awareness service based on visual scanning of journals and reports by information specialists. (6 references) (Author/SJ)

Discusses the problem of how to permit a patron to represent the relative importance of various index terms in a Boolean request while retaining the desirable properties of a Boolean system. (FM)

Discussion of the role of Boolean logic in the information retrieval process focuses on a study that investigated the optimization of search logic for the MEDLINE database. Measures of retrieval effectiveness are discussed, the relationship of weighting schema and the logical schema is considered, and further investigations are suggested. (17…

Discussion of problems with fuzzy subsets in document retrieval highlights attempts to invent a system of weighted fuzzy queries in which weights correspond to relative importance of each term in query as whole, and use of Kantor's Logic for Retrieval as an alternative to Boolean queries. Six references are cited. (EJS)

A standard online search strategy involving use of acronyms is evolved and searches are performed over wide range of databases. Advantage gained by use of acronyms is measured with respect to free and controlled terms, and percentages of extra documents retrieved are given. Four references and sample searches are included. (EJS)

Describes research designed to improve automatic pre-coordinate term indexing by applying language analysis techniques to identify term sources in requests, and to generate variant expressions of concepts involved for document text searching. Text analysis, term extraction, variant generation, and retrieval trial are highlighted. Thirteen…

Discusses use of associative search techniques and theoretical approaches to document retrieval problems contrasting two different ways of improving system performance: appending associative search techniques to conventional document retrieval systems and designing document retrieval systems based on probabilistic design principles. Four…

Describes the MultiText information retrieval system that finds arbitrary passages of text, as opposed to complete documents, that are likely to be relevant. Discusses relevance ranking, term expansion, interactive user interface, and distributed searching used in experiments for TREC-6 (Text Retrieval Conference) in the ad hoc, high precision,…

Use of syntactic trace as an access strategy for large files containing arbitrary languages for which thesaurus-based and multiple attribute search techniques are unsuitable. (LS)

Experience of browsing with a text retrieval system is reported. The technique discussed consists of adding and deleting query terms on successive interactive cycles. The number of hits consistently increased, while the number of false drops consistently decreased on successive cycles. The search system used allows non-Boolean free form query…

The objectives of this paper are to describe the effect of using weighted index terms in a document retrieval system, and to evaluate retrieval performance when queries are expanded by terms occurring in clusters with the query terms. Three data collections, each indexed by several methods, two of which were studied and reported on in previous…

The study compares the retrieval effectiveness of two alternative input and search systems in terms of such measures as recall, fallout, precision, and total retrieval. One system uses manually indexed document files searched by controlled vocabulary, while the other employs fulltext input using natural language searching. Both systems are applied…