A study of Internet usage by large, small, and midsized businesses suggests that midsized businesses may be at a competitive disadvantage. Found that small businesses were more likely than midsized or large firms to have home pages and to reveal computer/technology programs as potential Internet services needed to improve current operations. (PEN)

USENET newsgroup topics are created, and they evolve, mutate, and become extinct in ways fundamentally different from spoken dialog. These differences can be explained partially by the asynchronous nature of electronic communication, as well as by other factors unique to such wide-scale multi-user media. (Author)

Aging patterns are examined in "formal" use or impact of all scientific journals processed for the "Science Citation Index" during 1981 to 1995. A new classification system of journals in terms of their aging characteristics is introduced. It is shown that the cited half-life, printed in the "Journal Citation…

Presents a historical study of early mainframe computing that demonstrates ways in which computer documentation genres grew out of other document types. Suggests early forms of documentation were borrowed from existing genres, and that official and unofficial documentation existed concurrently, despite efforts to consolidate these divergent texts,…

Using the financial industry as a context, this study addresses the issue of the classification of electronic bookmarks in a multi-user system by investigating the factors that influence how individuals develop categories for bookmarks and how they choose to classify bookmarks within those organizational categories. Sample participant…

Inadequate school facility planning carries fiscal, human, and academic costs. Building a responsive school requires that future inhabitants participate in the planning process. The accommodation of various building-use patterns, teaching methods, and learning styles reflects how satisfactorily a school building performs for its users. New…

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that subjects introduced to a first programming language develop a representation of basic programming concepts that help them integrate new declarative knowledge from a second programming language. The effect on reading was greater for pages that were conceptually close across texts and for subjects who had…

Presents results of a descriptive survey that analyzed high school library media center use in one area of north Texas in 1991 and was designed to determine the nature and extent of student use of library media centers and to describe the characteristics of users and nonusers. (Author/LRW)

Two conceptions of domain analysis in library and information science emphasize theories of knowledge and study of literatures. Studies of information seeking and use can make an important contribution to domain analysis, and help integrate the two approaches. As understanding of information use develops, models can be constructed that represent…

Reports on an exploratory study of the measurement of commonality in the use of variables or measures by authors and groups of authors who have reported on studies of information retrieval system users. There is some similarity to cocitation analysis: when two individual papers or two authors over several works, use the same variables, this…

Examines demographic variables (gender, age, educational level) and motivation variables (perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness) associated with Internet usage activities (defined in terms of messaging, browsing, downloading, and purchasing). The questionnaire is appended. (Contains 57 references.) (Author/AEF)

From a log of 1,025,910 Excite users' queries, 116,050 sexually related queries were extracted. Findings indicated that in many aspects, sexual and non-sexually-related queries exhibit significant differences in terms of duration of the session, analysis of the results of each query, and search term usage. (AEF)

Online course syllabi provide a convenient source of information about library use. This article discusses the strategies used to retrieve syllabi, analyze library use, and develop new opportunities to collaborate with faculty. A new Web-based service was developed to pull course- and library-related materials into a convenient package.

Although many appeals for reform include adopting more student-centred assessment, few studies have examined the postsecondary classroom. Using the 1993 and 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, the results of the current study revealed that faculty in the sciences were less likely to use student-centred assessment practices than faculty…

This column is typically devoted to discussion of the different ways in which public service librarians use technology. But for this, the special graduate student issue and her inaugural issue as the technology columnist, Breakstone is flipping things around. Public service librarians can best help their graduate student patrons by understanding…