This article explores how Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) manages knowledge retrieval by employees when they need to access documents written by colleagues in geographically distant units. CSC's establishment of virtual communities of practice facilitates the coordination of knowledge, and minimises contextual gaps between senders and…

Web site usage statistics are a widely used tool for Web site development, but libraries are still learning how to use them successfully. This case study summarizes how Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale implemented Google Analytics on its Web site and used the reports to inform a site redesign. As the main campus library at…

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…

The retrieval decision problem is considered from the viewpoint of a decision theory approach. A threshold rule based on earlier rules for indexing decisions is considered and analyzed for retrieval decisions as a measure of retrieval performance. The threshold rule is seen as a good descriptive design measure of what a reasonable retrieval system…

A study of relevance through comparison of texts judged by users is reported. The relevant set of documents for each information request was characterized by textual properties. The validity of procedures and interpretations is discussed. Consideration is given to possible mechanization of the process and its possible usefulness in development of…

Part Three of this five part report on Salton's Magical Automatic Retriever of Texts (SMART) project contains four papers. The first: "Variations on the Query Splitting Technique with Relevance Feedback" by T. P. Baker discusses some experiments in relevance feedback performed with variations on the technique of query splitting. The…

The development of an automatic indexing technique, called Double KWIC (DKWIC) Coordinate Indexing, is described which extends the KWIC indexing principles to provide easy access to an additional level of specificity for information indexed under these frequently appearing terms. Chapter 2 discusses indexing terminology and some fundamental…

Investigates the feasibility of using a distance measure for automatic sequential document classification. This property of the distance measure is used to design a sequential classification algorithm which classifies key words and analyzes them separately in order to assign primary and secondary classes to a document. (VT)

Describes the System for Conceptual Information Summarization, Organization, and Retrieval (SCISOR), which is designed to parse and understand short newspaper stories on corporate takeovers. Highlights include issues involved in developing memory organization and retrieval components, theoretical considerations involved in the system design, and a…

Presents adaptation of a probabilistic theoretical model previously used in relevance feedback for use in automatic indexing of documents (in the sense of imitating) human indexers. Methods for model application are proposed, independence assumptions used in the model are interpreted, and the probability of a dependence model is discussed.…

Designed to measure end-users' efficacy in online searching based on their presearch experience with printed literature retrieval systems for the search topic, this experiment examined differences between manual searches preceding electronic searches and vice versa. The results were not statistically significant due to the small sample size.…

Compares the differences in coverage and utility of three substructure databases--Chemical Abstracts, Index Chemicus, and Chemical Information System's Nomenclature Search System. The differences between Chemical Abstracts with two different vendors--STN International and Questel--are described and a summary guide for choosing between databases is…

Presents a general mathematical framework for information retrieval, in which query evaluation is seen as a mapping from the free term algebra built by query descriptors and weights to the semantic algebra of evaluation value. Competing mathematical models that try to describe how retrieval systems behave are reviewed. (Author/MBR)