Discusses the current status of 4 developments that will determine the emergence of generally available multimedia information services: high-bandwidth networks; inexpensive user appliances capable of handling multimedia; adoption of standards for representation, compression, packaging, and transmission; and development of a corpus of multimedia…

Gives an overview of various linguistic software tools in the field of intelligent text handling that are being developed in Germany utilizing artificial intelligence techniques in the field of natural language processing. Syntactical analysis of documents is described and application areas are discussed. (10 references) (LRW)

Describes the creation of a prototype CD-ROM disc at the Earth Science Information Center (ESIC) that contained information on aerial photographs formerly held on computer output microfiche. Specifications are discussed, fields of information that were indexed are described, search and retrieval display capabilities are explained, and the results…

Describes current developments in microcomputer technology, including CD-ROM, the 80386 microprocessor, and the graphic user interface. It is argued that, as the information handling capacity of microcomputers increases, the microcomputer industry will increasingly market information to end users, and the library will be challenged to provide the…

Describes a study that analyzed search results in the medical behavioral sciences to compare the overall performance of descriptor and citation search strategies in identifying relevant and novel documents. The findings are presented in terms of retrieval overlap and novelty percentages, and factors affecting retrieval performance are discussed.…

Describes a study that examined the effects of different kinds of cues (unrestricted, bibliographic and structural) on the recall of a text. Results are analyzed by the degree to which protocol vocabulary matched index terms and propositions from the article. Implications for known-item retrieval and the design of information system interfaces are…

Describes a project at the British Architectural Library to automate all of its systems into one integrated database, maintaining the specific requirements of the architectural curator while introducing systems and standards accepted by the librarian. The discussion covers the methods used to achieve a link between objects and documentation. (CLB)

The European Commission is responsible for the development of online information systems and for providing public databases of information on the European Union's activities. Topics include the union's telecommunications policy and role; network facilities; ways to access online services; programs to promote the use of information services; and a…

Discusses two query evaluation strategies used in large text retrieval systems: (1) term-at-a-time; and (2) document-at-a-time. Describes optimization techniques that can reduce query evaluation costs. Presents simulation results that compare the performance of these optimization techniques when applied to natural language query evaluation. (JMV)

Proposes a new learning algorithm to improve the retrieval effectiveness of the search system used in the hypertext environment using an extended Boolean model with links to improve the ranking of retrieved items. Highlights include the basic retrieval scheme, the learning scheme, and a review of basic probabilistic retrieval models. (Contains 32…

Describes the kinds of online sources to use and processes involved in finding information on emerging markets and new industry trends. Highlights include relevance ranking in DIALOG searches; press releases; news sources; news alert services; market research reports; tracking research in progress; company information; and tracking subsidiaries.…

Discusses a user interface that simplifies NF Squared (non-first-normal-form) relational query formulation in which query specification remains compact and straightforward. This interface allows for nesting and general hierarchical structures and restructuring which provides for more effective retrieval and query formulation. (Author/JKP)

Presents an overview of the second Text Retrieval Conference (TREC-2), an opinion paper about the program, and nine papers by participants that show a range of techniques used in TREC. Topics include traditional text retrieval and information technology, efficiency, the use of language processing techniques, unusual approaches to text retrieval,…

Describes an information retrieval system in which advanced natural language processing is used to enhance the effectiveness of term-based document retrieval by preprocessing the documents; discovering interterm dependencies and build a conceptual hierarchy specific to database domain; and processing the user's natural language requests into…

The Latent Semantic Indexing and MatchPlus systems examine similar contexts in which words appear and create representational models that capture the similarity of meaning of terms and then use the representation for retrieval. Text Retrieval Conference experiments using these systems demonstrate the computational feasibility of using…