Presents a compilation of definitions of information and other related terms including data, knowledge, impact, and development to organize and interrelate them. The goal is to provide members of the information science profession with a common basis for referring to key concepts. (Author/LRW)

Proposes a model for digital library and hypermedia organizations that is adaptive, providing different conceptual orderings to support browsing for different individuals' or groups' needs. Highlights include types of links, document ordering and the Gray code (a binary programming code), adaptive classification, and an economic model for document…

Describes an exploration system for large image databases. The system, which consists of three stages, allows user to interpret and annotate an image in the context in which that image appears, dramatically reducing the time taken to annotate a large collection of images. Includes 25 figures and two tables. (AEF)

Discusses the use of contextual information for identifying and understanding users' information needs and presents an approach that has potential for studying Web users' search contexts by automatically grouping a user's consecutive search activities on the same search topic into one session, based in part on statistical data from Web search…

Jean Tague-Sutcliffe's book "Measuring Information" offers a theory to permit the measurement of information services by means of the user-centered notion of the subjective information associated with the interaction between a user and a record on an occasion. Some suggestions are made to improve the theory's foundations. (Author/AEF)

Explores ways of writing the history of information infrastructures. Describes the historical development of the information infrastructure of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a universal medical classification system. Discusses changing medical information needs and the ICD's advancements in information technology and…

Suggests that the principles underlying the procedure used by doctors to diagnose a patient's disease are useful in the design of intelligent information-retrieval systems because the task of the doctor is conceptually similar to the computer or human intermediary's task in information retrieval: to draw out the user's query/information need.…

Describes a software tool that deciphers abbreviations by finding whole-word equivalents or "disabbreviations." Presents results of experimental studies that test the tool's disabbreviation of technical text in computer programs. Findings show that the prototype tool is easy to use, finds correct disabbreviations, improves text…

Reviews past research on user-satisfaction and relevance information systems. Describes an experiment that compares user-satisfaction with retrieved items and the retrieval process with the relevance of the items in resolving user information needs. Results indicate a connection exists between relevance and user-satisfaction with the retrieved…

In information retrieval (IR), the aim of genetic algorithms (GA) is to help a system to find, in a huge documents collection, a good reply to a query expressed by the user. Analysis of phenomena seen during the implementation of a GA for IR has led to a new crossover operation, which is introduced and compared to other learning methods.…

Describes a collaborative effort to explore user needs in a digital library, develop interface prototypes for a digital library, and suggest and prototype tools for digital librarians and users at the Library of Congress. The design process and results are described and suggestions for future work are offered. (Author/LRW)

Compares information requirement-elicitation (IRE) methods for decision support systems (DSS) with knowledge acquisition (KA) methods for expert systems (ES) development. The definition and architectures of ES and DSS are compared and the systems' development cycles and IRE/KA methods are discussed. Differences are noted between ES and DSS…

Outlines a prototype of an intelligent information-retrieval tool to facilitate information access for an undergraduate seeking information for a term paper. Topics include diagnosing the information need, Kuhlthau's information-search-process model, Shannon's mathematical theory of communication, and principles of uncertainty expansion and…

Describes the methods and results of a user-centered field study that investigated the design requirements for a Web-based research library, a digital library representing a collection of large domain-specific documents that can be accessed remotely to support scholarly research. Results provide insight into Web-based inquiry and requirements for…

Reviews the TREC (Text Retrieval Conference) program, considering the test results, the findings for information retrieval, and the lessons TREC offers for information retrieval evaluation. Topics include the ad hoc retrieval task; indexing models; document and query descriptions; search strategies; and the user's request as the dominant factor in…