Document retrieval tasks composed of human relevance judgments need test sets that allow comparison of human retrieval and automated retrieval and that place absolute limits on performance by any method. Results suggest that it should be possible to improve retrieval system performance within recommended limits by incorporating specific subject…

To determine if known-item searching was possible with four of the Web's most popular search engines (Alta Vista, Excite, Infoseek Guide, and Lycos A2Z), searches for 39 known Web sites were performed. The search engines were then ranked according to retrieval of relevant and exact matches and the order in which the search results appeared. (PEN)

Describes a theoretic process to apply Bahadur-Lazarsfeld expansion (BLE) to general probabilistic models and the state-of-the-art 2-Poisson model. Through experiments on two standard document collections, one in Korean and one in English, it is demonstrated that incorporation of term dependences using BLE significantly contributes to performance…

Reports on a test of the applicability of the theory of General Scalability to documents in terms of transitivity, substitutability, and independence. Implications for the construction of test collections in information retrieval research are examined. (24 references) (EAM)

Describes an examination of the effectiveness of retrieving and ranking records from citation indexes based on the number of references in common with an identified and relevant record. It is concluded that this retrieval method is potentially useful, especially in those searches backward and forward in time that are enabled by the design of…

Discusses the interpretation of nominal compounds in the context of natural language processing for information retrieval. Knowledge-intensive algorithms that can successfully interpret compounds found in technical documents are described, and experiments are reported that indicate these algorithms may be unnecessary for improving retrieval…

Describes a study that supported two hypotheses concerning the use of anaphors in information retrieval: first, that anaphors tend to refer to integral concepts rather than peripheral concepts; second, that various term weighting schemes are affected differently by anaphoric resolution. The implications for the use of anaphoric resolution for…

Reports on two experiments investigating the relationship between topical subject expertise and the assessment of relevance. Results indicate that topical subject expertise enhances effects of the semantic distance model (SDM), and that relevance assessment is a contingent, psychological phenomenon that is part of the human-perception task of…

Proposes an argumentation-based method for information retrieval that involves representing a scholarly article by means of rhetorical structure rather than by a semantic representation of content. Topics addressed include problems with indexing practices, the argumentative nature of articles, rhetoric as an information categorizing schema, and…

The fifth in a series of articles on microcomputer software for information storage and retrieval describes characteristics of and presents test results for seven programs in the following categories: personal information managers, including 3by5/RediReference, askSam, Dayflo Tracker, and Ize; Personal Librarian, a relevance ranking program; and…

Describes the development of an information retrieval system designed for nonspecialist users that is based on the binary vector model. The syntactic structure of phrases used for indexing is examined, queries using an experimental collection of documents are described, and precision values are examined. (19 references) (LRW)

Discussion of clustering of documents and queries in information retrieval systems focuses on the use of a genetic algorithm to adapt subject descriptions so that documents become more effective in matching relevant queries. Various types of clustering are explained, and simulation experiments used to test the genetic algorithm are described. (27…

Reports preliminary results of a research project that investigated the effectiveness of a new technique for information retrieval interfaces called colinked descriptors, based on the concept of cocited references in the field of bibliometrics. Examples of colinked descriptors from the "Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors" are presented.…

Describes a theoretical model based on binary vectors that was developed to improve relevance in information retrieval systems. Earlier probabilistic models are examined, quadratic and linear discriminant functions are discussed, relationships between queries and documents are considered, and further research is suggested. (15 references) (LRW)

Discussion of relevance in information retrieval focuses on manifestations of relevance within a system of relevance. Discusses intention, context, inference, and interaction; explains the concepts of affective, motivational, situational, and socio-cognitive relevance; and proposes a consolidated model of relevance manifestations. (Author/LRW)