This literature review, covering materials between 1996 and 1998, focuses on the development and application of metadata standards used by the library and information science communities to describe, retrieve, and manage information in the digital environment. Discusses MARC as metadata; SGML-based metadata; and the Dublin Core element set.…

Introduces a new iteration model for the calculation of co-word maps. Co-word analysis is an objective quantitative method for analyzing and integrating survey information about research trends and structures that avoids problems using statistical methods to produce mappings of reduced information. (PEN)

Discusses how imprecision and uncertainty are dealt with in the UFO (Uncertainty and Fuzziness in an Object-oriented) database model. Such information is expressed by means of possibility distributions, and modeled by means of the proposed concept of "role objects." The role objects model uncertain, tentative information about objects,…

Presents a system which supports image retrieval by high-level chromatic contents, the sensations that color accordances generate on the observer. Surveys Itten's theory of color semantics and discusses image description and query specification. Presents examples of visual querying. (AEF)

Provides tips on searching Chemical Abstracts (CA). Discusses coverage, indexing policies, differences between the print and online versions, transliterations, arrangement of the print indexes, abbreviations, and importance of the CA Index Guide for effective searching. (MES)

Introduces a new method for the visualization of information retrieval called TOFIR (Tool of Facilitating Information Retrieval). Discusses the use of angle attributes of a document to construct the angle-based visual space; two-dimensional and three-dimensional visual tools; ambiguity; and future research directions. (Author/LRW)

Describes Features, an intelligent Web search engine that is able to perform real-time adaptive feature (i.e., keyword) and document learning. Explains how Features learns from users' document relevance feedback and automatically extracts and suggests indexing keywords relevant to a search query, and learns from users' keyword relevance feedback…

Describes and illustrates a distributed approach to usability (envisioning usability across the genres, practices, uses, and goals of a given activity) using a four-decade examination of a traffic accident location and analysis system. Uses the theoretical framework of "genre ecologies" to show how communities of users interact with…

Presents a prototype system for image retrieval from the Internet using Web mining. Discusses the architecture of the Web image retrieval prototype; document space modeling; user log mining; and image retrieval experiments to evaluate the proposed system. (AEF)

Describes efforts in supporting information retrieval from OCR (optical character recognition) degraded text. Reports on approaches used in an automatic cataloging and searching contest for books in multiple languages, including a vector space retrieval model, an n-gram indexing method, and a weighting scheme; and discusses problems of Asian…

Explores what might be the optimal query expansion (QE) processing method with semantically coded thesauri. Examines whether QE via semantically coded thesauri terminology is more effective in the "automatic" or "interactive" processing environment. Results revealed that synonyms and partial synonyms and narrower terms are…

Describes experiments in the retrieval of spoken documents in multimedia systems. Problems in spoken document retrieval are discussed, and a voice mail application is explained that combines state-of-the-art speech recognition with established document retrieval technologies to provide an effective and efficient retrieval tool. (Author/LRW)

Provides an overview of robots that retrieve World Wide Web documents and index data and then store it in a database. Nine robot-generated databases are described, including record content, services, search features, and sample search results; and sidebars discuss the controversy about Web robots and other resource discovery tools. (LRW)

Discussion of information and information retrieval focuses on the connection between a calculus defined on channels and information retrieval, and proposes a model of an information retrieval system based on this calculus. Topics include conditionality, situation theory, the flow of information, channel theory, and four principles for an…

Discusses improving the quality of satisfaction of information needs through the use of information retrieval systems. The characteristics of information need are investigated; a new instrument in information retrieval systems is proposed which takes into account different components of information need; and future research is suggested.…