Discussion of the use of Latent Semantic Indexing to determine relevancy in information retrieval focuses on statistical regression and Bayesian methods. Topics include keyword searching; a multiple regression model; how the regression model can aid search methods; and limitations of this approach, including complexity, linearity, and…

Computer vision offers a variety of techniques for searching for pictures in large collections of images. Appearance methods compare images based on the overall content of the image using certain criteria. Finding methods concentrate on matching subparts of images, defined in a variety of ways, in hope of finding particular objects. These ideas…

An evaluation of the "Modern Language Association of America International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures" (MLAIB) was undertaken to determine whether it might index large pools of social science research. It was compared with 11 social science periodical indexes and bibliographies for journal…

Rosetta, an indexing and retrieval system indexes papers in a collection based on the way they have been described when referenced by other papers in the collection. Using Rosetta, simple natural language queries retrieve high-precision results in which descriptions based on citations clearly summarize retrieved papers, allowing users to quickly…

Offers a brief history of the Dublin Core initiative, an international, interdisciplinary effort to define a core set of elements for resource discovery. Describes outcomes of Dublin Core Workshops 1-4. Discusses outcomes of the Helsinki Metadata Workshop, focusing on the "Finnish Finish" which will form the basis of the first formal…

Discussion of subject access points in databases concentrates on the broader theoretical perspective. Topics include technology-driven stages in the development of subject access points; a taxonomy of subject access points; document titles; abstracts; references and citations; full text; and descriptors, identifiers, classification codes, and…

Knowledge of empirical research has become important for everyone involved in education and special education. Policy, practice, and informed reporting rely on locating and understanding unfiltered, original source material. Although access to vast amounts of research has been greatly facilitated by online databases, such as ERIC and PsychInfo,…

Although articles in series generally embrace a central theme, they may not share a common index term; retrieval by medical subject heading often produces an incomplete set. Since subject retrieval is problematic, it would be helpful if articles in a series could be retrieved by series title. Five quality-assessed general medical journals…

Designed to offer a "common language" to all of the parties involved in European cooperation in education, the European Education Metathesaurus is the set made up of the European Education Thesaurus (the third edition of the EUDISED Thesaurus) and the indexing languages that will be attached to it, whether sub-thesauri, specialized…

Prestel is an interactive videotex system which has been available to the public in the United Kingdom since the late 1970's. Recent research funded by the British Library Research and Development Department provided public libraries with access to Prestel and monitored their reactions to the services. Aims of the trial were to promote Prestel by…

NETPAD is a microcomputer-based system, implemented on a Commodore PET 2001-8, by which a human indexer can input, retrieve, and edit information in order to produce a variety of permuted index displays. The basic unit of the NETPAD system is a subnetwork (a description of a single document) containing a set of concept nodes (author, title, date,…

This is a preliminary report on an ongoing research project examining the "Current Index to Journals in Education" indexing of two major, general interest academic library journals: the "Journal of Academic Librarianship" (JAL) and "College and Research Libraries" (C&RL). The data are presented "as is,"…

Papers on cataloging which were presented at the 1986 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference include: (1) "Cataloging of Government Documents in the Age of Automation" (Chong Y. Yoon, United States), which discusses the use of MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) formats to integrate government documents into…

The five papers in this collection focus on bibliographic control: (1) "Developments and Progress in Bibliography" (B. C. Bloomfield, Chairman, Section on Bibliography); (2) "Developments and Progress in Cataloguing" (Tom Delsey, Chairman, Section on Cataloging); (3) "Developments and Progress in Classification and…

This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of keyword searching in an online catalog to traditional subject searching in one special collection of vocational rehabilitation materials. Subject area specialists assessed the contents of books using their terminology, and compared the results to MARC records. It was found that slightly…