Coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is a Web-based system that provides increased access to data and information on the nation's biological resources. This article-an individual case study-addresses the structure of the NBII related to thematic, infrastructure and place-based…

Explains why the Internet is not replacing libraries. Highlights include the lack of substantive material that is available; problems with finding what is there; the lack of quality control; physical difficulties with reading electronic texts; high costs of digitizing; and lack of access to older material. (LRW)

Investigates ways in which people group or categorize documents associated with a voluminous work to guide the construction of organized displays for information retrieval systems. Discusses results of cluster analyses based on "A Christmas Carol" (Charles Dickens) and suggests implications for metadata standards and digital libraries as…

Reports results of a study investigating effects of four user characteristics on users' mental models of information retrieval (IR) systems. Findings indicated that educational and professional status, academic background, and computer experience had significant effects in differentiating users on their factor scores. First language had a…

Describes workshops based on active learning that were developed collaboratively between a librarian and an economics faculty member to teach students how to locate appropriate academic sources on the World Wide Web and in library databases, how to create effective search strategies, and how to use retrieval features in InfoTrac. (LRW)

Examines visual information needs as expressed in users' Web image queries on the Excite search engine. Discusses metadata; content-based image retrieval; user interaction with images; terms per query; term frequency; and implications for the development of models for visual information retrieval and for the design of Web search engines.…

Explores the intellectual subject structure and research themes in software engineering through the identification and analysis of a core journal literature via two expert perspectives: the author, through cocitation analysis; and the indexer, through subject terms selected to facilitate retrieval. Topics include cluster analysis, multidimensional…

Applies the anthropological concepts of culture shock and ethnocentricity to problems of computer and nonprint literacy in an electronic library. The role of librarians as agents of socialization is discussed, and the concept of education as a lengthy, ongoing process is considered. (Contains 12 references.) (LRW)

Explores aspects of information retrieval complexity, specifically the demands on users and information systems, using a proposed query as an example. Discusses previous writings on subject access, search strategies and retrieval potential, and classification as a retrieval tool. An appendix shows the subject headings assigned to books in a…

Describes the Gateway to Educational Materials Project (GEM) at the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology at Syracuse University. Explicates the GEM metadata element set and how GEM metadata is created. Discusses the syntactic binding of GEM metadata and the mechanisms for its distribution. Concludes with a brief discussion of existing…

Presents abstracts of a session that discussed cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) on the World Wide Web. Topics include CLIR research in Chinese-English, German-English, and Japanese-English involving machine translation, semantic indexing, domain concepts, integrating new technologies, large-scale multilingual lexicons, and international…

Discusses demands users face when searching for information in online libraries of product documentation. Demonstrates how physical libraries provide a helpful metaphor for design. Offers heuristics and a conceptual prototype for facilitating electronic document retrieval. Argues that the search form itself should communicate the way materials are…

Details the impact of online databases, PROQUEST in particular, on composition students' research. Indicates a need for more instruction that addresses new literacies emerging from the current transitional age of electronic and print cultures. Presents new evaluative methods for online documents that utilize knowledge of online genres, information…

Summarizes speeches from a debate about the future of reference librarians. Highlights include a decline in traditional reference statistics; the growth of commercial online reference services; attempts to move traditional services to the Web; and users' needs for librarians to help them find authoritative, unbiased, free information. (LRW)

Defines "disintermediation" as the process of diminishing the act of coming between by intermediaries (information specialists, librarians, patent searchers). Discusses the need for professional searchers to prove their value, anticipate customers' needs, and know the Internet; and to get active in professional associations. (AEF)