In the case of digital collections of text, provision of a simple unified user interface faces several challenges, among them a tension between intellectual adequacy and simplicity of access. Examines the question of how to allow cross-collection searching and display while preserving the variation in texts and their markup and points to…

Investigates how an informal computerized environment, or workspace, can support information seeking. Outlines the design space for information-seeking environments and presents a prototype, SketchTrieve, a graphic editor. Discusses how this environment might support information-seeking in ways not available in other more overdetermined systems.…

Describes a project in which students pick a migratory animal and track it during migration using internet resources. Employs background readings, authentic research data, and questions to experts to enable students to have meaningful learning experiences. (DDR)

Considers the value of published subject bibliographies in helping to winnow the amount of retrieved information from electronic catalogs and indexes based on an information search of the interdisciplinary field of play and leisure. A case study compares the process of developing two bibliographies about play and leisure. (Author/LRW)

Reports findings from an exploratory study investigating working notes created during encoding and external storage (EES) processes by human search intermediaries (librarians at the University of North Texas) using a Boolean information retrieval (IR) system. Implications for the design of IR interfaces and further research is discussed.…

Discusses the nature of term groupings, phrases, and text windows in full-text documents and computes the statistical significance of windows. Topics include classifying documents within disciplines or on a theory versus practice spectrum; and grammatical characteristics for automatic classification of documents, for information retrieval, and for…

Structured abstracts containing several subheadings (background, aim, method, results, and conclusions) have replaced traditional abstracts in most medical journals. The results of 2 studies, the first of 52 readers using an electronic database and the second of 56 readers using a printed database, suggest that it is easier for readers to search…

In personal information retrieval, items are associated with events and can be accessed by their relationship to events as well as content. Describes two early projects and a prototype graphical event-based retrieval system comprising file changes, mail messages, active badge sightings, video snapshots, desk diary entries, notes, weather reports…

Presents two storage models and several other associated models for the presentation of multimedia documents. Analysis of these models reveals their capacity to synchronize various temporal scenarios while allowing users simultaneous and secure access to multimedia systems. Discusses theoretical foundations, information processing, multimedia…

Discusses the growth of the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web, and considers Web-based learning and educational materials on the Web. Topics include methods of information dissemination; the interactive nature of information on the Web; multimedia; the source of information; publishing; research needs; and search engines for locating…

Describes a computerized program presently being developed on the World Wide Web, which is designed to locate and store reference information through the use of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). Reports a preliminary investigation of the adequacy of FAQs to cover a sample of questions on American government, politics, elections and law. (AEF)

Presents preliminary results from a study of an information need identification system for interactive information retrieval for undergraduates researching a history topic. Concludes that the query taxonomy must include levels of topic specificity because while general topic-based queries are inappropriate as query terms, more specific topic-based…

Discusses issues related to natural language processing, including theoretical developments; natural language understanding; tools and techniques; natural language text processing systems; abstracting; information extraction; information retrieval; interfaces; software; Internet, Web, and digital library applications; machine translation for…

Describes an online library catalog that was developed for an Austrian scientific library that includes table of contents in addition to the standard bibliographic information in order to increase relevance for searchers. Discusses the technology involved, including OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and automatic indexing techniques; weighted…

Presents an annotated list of several World Wide Web search engines, including Yahoo, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Magellan, Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite, Deja News, and the LISZT Directory of discussion groups. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are included. Discussion assesses performance and describes rules and syntax for refining or limiting a search.…