Analyzes certain features of work tasks and relates these features to types of information people are looking for and using in their tasks, patterning of search strategies for obtaining information and relevance assessments in choosing retrieved documents. The major claim is that these information activities are systematically connected to task…

Processing language requires the retrieval of concepts from memory in response to an ongoing stream of information. This retrieval is facilitated if one can infer the gist of a sentence, conversation, or document and use that gist to predict related concepts and disambiguate words. This article analyzes the abstract computational problem…

Meta-analysis is a technique used in a variety of disciplines to combine and summarize the findings of previous research. One step in the production of a meta-analysis is a thorough literature search for relevant studies. A variety of methods can be used to increase the number of studies that are found. This study examines the extent to which some…

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) launched the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) in 2002. ARC was the first centralized system for describing materials held throughout NARA's nationwide system of archival repositories. ARC's complicated development involved the entire agency, as staff wrestled with years of distinct descriptive…

This technical report, produced in partnership by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and SPSS Inc., explores the promise of data mining alumni records at educational institutions. Working with individual alumni records from The Johns Hopkins Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, a predictive regression model is…

This book is designed primarily to help users find meaningful words for natural language, or free-text, computer searching of bibliographic and textual databases in the social and behavioral sciences. Additionally, it covers many socially relevant and technical topics not covered by the usual literary thesaurus, therefore it may also be useful for…

In an attempt to measure on-line searching performance, test searches of one question conducted by three bibliographic searchers are analysed to determine the effects of search strategy on results. The study reviews retrieved citations for relevance, calculating precision values, and estimated recall for each search. Performance analysis reveals…

An automated retrieval system for reference works was constructed as a prototype in order to illustrate the capabilities and potentialities of future retrieval systems. More than 170 biographical works were indexed and stored in a computer disk to form a biographical data base, and a computer program was written to match patron queries. Consistent…

PROBE, a batch-mode information retrieval program used to search the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) data base, was developed by Indiana University. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, questionnaires were given to the users of 200 consecutive searches during February 1973. Relevance ratios were computed by comparing the…

The purpose of this guide is to give an up-to-date presentation of the information service offered by the documentation center at the Royal Institute of Technology (RIT) and to facilitate the utilization of the service. The guide gives a general account of the multidisciplinary computerized current awareness service (SDI) and a detailed…

The transfer of information through space and time in communication systems is often accompanied by significant delays which give rise to meaningful storage problems. Mathematical models have been developed for the study of these kinds of problems which are applicable to the design of manual, library-type, or mechanized information storage and…

A correlation between recall (the retrieval of all available relevant documents) and quantity of text which served as a source of index terms on input can reasonably be expected. Specifically, recall should decrease as the quantity of text serving as a source of index terms is restricted. On the other hand, the time for indexing and therefore the…

Discusses science and engineering students' reactions and attitudes toward the use of on-line bibliographic information retrieval and major search systems vs manual searching in a course dealing with information resources. Problems encountered and the relevance to student needs of the on-line component of the course are included. (Author/CWM)

Briefly reviews various methodologies for constructing enhanced document representations, discusses their general lack of usefulness, and describes a method of document indexing which uses title words taken from bibliographically related items. Evaluation of this process indicates that it is not sufficiently reliable to warrant incorporation into…

Provides an overview of methods for improving the effectiveness of Boolean retrieval systems, including document clustering, relevance feedback, weighted term searching, ranked output, and fuzzy set theory. The discussion of experimental studies with the SMART and SIRE systems focuses on the implementation and results of these methods. (69…