Discusses the problems and current research techniques being explored in the area of Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) for finding documents in languages other than the original query. Discusses language identification methods, techniques for automatically generating queries in other languages, and retrieving and merging query results.…

Investigates an automatic method for Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) that utilizes the multilingual Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus to translate Spanish natural-language queries into English. Results indicate that for Spanish, the UMLS Metathesaurus-based CLIR method is at least equivalent to if not better than…

Discusses both the opportunities and challenges to academic librarians of information resources available on the Internet. Notes that, beyond mechanical expertise, there are intellectual problems regarding research skills and critical assessment that have increased with the sheer amount of information available. The academic librarian's role is to…

Presents a framework for interface design that provides people with flexible control over different views for an information space, particularly on the World Wide Web. The agileviews framework defines overviews, previews, reviews, peripheral views, and shared views that help people make decisions about where they should focus attention during…

Discussion of office document search procedures focuses on variable bit-block compression (VBC) signature files and extends VBC signatures for document ranking. Topics include weighted VBC and aggregate VBC; word size, in bits, of term frequencies; storage and retrieval; logarithmic scaling and linear scaling; and ranking performance. (LRW)

The volume of data available through literature and databases on the internet is valuable to students as resources. Describes an integrated approach that involves the use of the library, literature, and internet databases. (Author/SAH)

A survey of British adult students returning to education found they lacked basic as well as information literacy skills and have difficulty with information retrieval and use of learning resource centers. Partnerships between adult educators as facilitators and librarians as teachers are needed. (SK)

These six articles discuss knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). Topics include data mining; knowledge management systems; applications of knowledge discovery; text and Web mining; text mining and information retrieval; user search patterns through Web log analysis; concept analysis; data collection; and data structure inconsistency. (LRW)

Information retrieval (IR) is driven by a process that decides whether a document is about a query. The purpose of this article is to consider "aboutness" from a fundamental, neutral perspective, to shed light on the nature of aboutness by formalizing properties describing it, and to define a set of reasonable properties of aboutness,…

Discusses the integration of knowledge management into business applications. Topics include the difference between knowledge and information; performance-centered design (PCD); applying knowledge to support business outcomes, including context, experience, and information quality; techniques for merging PCD and knowledge management, including…

Traditional themes of information science must be expanded to accommodate systematic understandings of ways to design effective documentary systems and anticipate their social consequences. The field of social informatics offers important concepts, theories, and methods that give this kind of inquiry a sound scientific basis. Social informatics…

Presents a method for extracting maximal frequent sequences in a set of documents. A maximal frequent sequence is a sequence of words that is frequent in the document collection and is not contained in any other longer frequent sequence. Frequent maximal sequences can be used as content descriptors for documents. (MES)

Reviews models of information behavior and introduces a model based on the goal-directed behavior of problem solving. A key part of the information seeking and searching process, 'uncertainty reduction,' is being explored in a project supported by the British Library Research and Innovation Center. Preliminary results from the pilot phase of the…

Examines cognitive maps on research topics generated by experts and non-experts. Both experts and non-experts modified the given vocabulary by either adding or dropping terms. The dominant configuration for the maps was top-down. Experts tended to use a problem-oriented approach to organize vocabulary while non-experts often applied a…

Provides an introduction to articles in this special "Perspectives" issue of "Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology." The articles, taken collectively, contain significant elements of a research agenda in image indexing and retrieval for the next decade. Articles focus on user, representation,…