Explains the SMART information retrieval project at Cornell University, which emphasizes completely automatic approaches to the understanding and retrieval of large quantities of text. Describes work in the sixth TREC (Text Retrieval Conference) that focused on routing, ad hoc, and foreign language environments; cross-lingual runs; and maintaining…

Discusses performance of the built-in search facilities of the commercially available Verity search engine at the sixth TREC (Text Retrieval Conference) and explores the impact of simple enhancements that could improve performance. Highlights include the ad hoc approach; Verity Boolean-based query language; term selection; term weighting;…

Explains how a search engine, or information retrieval system, operates. Four modules are described: the document processor, including term stemming, term weight assignment, and creating an index; the query processor, including parsing and query term weighting; the search and match function; and ranking capability. (LRW)

Considers information retrieval systems as a subset of information systems and examines the information spaces of systems and cognitive spaces of users. Presents a method for automatically generating information spaces from document collections that uses term cooccurrence, eigensystems analysis, and Principal Components Analysis, and discusses…

Purpose: In 1980, Porter presented a simple algorithm for stemming English language words. This paper summarises the main features of the algorithm, and highlights its role not just in modern information retrieval research, but also in a range of related subject domains. Design/methodology/approach: Review of literature and research involving use…

Even with President Barack Obama's promises to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and withdraw troops from Iraq, the subject of torture keeps making the news. With all that detainees have had to endure during their incarcerations--the recent memos detail stress positions, cramped confinement, and waterboarding, among other tactics--perhaps…

In an inquiry-based classroom, student interest is at the heart of curriculum planning, instruction, and assessment. Students are responsible for asking questions, using sources effectively to discover answers, and deciding what format would best present their findings. Aside from creating a sense of ownership, inquiry in the classroom engages…

With the rapid development of wireless communication and sensor technologies, ubiquitous learning has become a promising solution to educational problems. In context-aware ubiquitous learning environments, it is required that learning content is retrieved according to environmental contexts, such as learners' location. Also, a learning content…

The purpose of this study was to investigate medical students' information commitments toward online web medical information. The sample consisted of 534 volunteer medical university students with internet experience from 6 medical universities in Taiwan. This study used the Information Commitment Survey (ICS) for an investigation of medical…

This study investigated an innovative approach of program evaluation through analyses of student learning logs, demographic data, and end-of-course evaluation surveys in an online K-12 supplemental program. The results support the development of a program evaluation model for decision making on teaching and learning at the K-12 level. A case study…

Learning analytics offers higher education valuable insights that can inform strategic decision-making regarding resource allocation for educational excellence. Research demonstrates that learning management systems (LMSs) can increase student sense of community, support learning communities and enhance student engagement and success, and LMSs…

In the late 1990s the Archives of Ontario adopted a version of the Australian "series system" for the arrangement of Government of Ontario records. Series-based systems of arrangement and description provide an alternative means for archives to represent the relationships between a body of records, the functions and activities that…

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether costs invoked by the presence of an irrelevant singleton distractor in a visual search task are due to attentional capture by the irrelevant singleton or spatially unrelated filtering costs. Measures of spatial effects were based on distance effects, compatibility effects, and differences…

The Third International Conference on Data Mining (EDM 2010) was held in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. It follows the second conference at the University of Cordoba, Spain, on July 1-3, 2009 and the first edition of the conference held in Montreal in 2008, and a series of workshops within the AAAI, AIED, EC-TEL, ICALT, ITS, and UM conferences. EDM 2011…

Designed to provide students of information science with an introduction to British librarian Samuel Clement Bradford's 1934 findings about the scattering of information, this reader on Bradford's Law begins by discussing its use in calculating search procedures in printed bibliographies as well as in databases. The following additional materials…