Discussion of information filtering (IF) and information retrieval focuses on the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) as an alternative method for both IF and term selection and compares its effectiveness to that of traditional methods. Results show that the ANN relevance prediction out-performs the prediction of an IF system. (Author/LRW)

Discusses relevance judgments in information retrieval; considers the collaborative nature of information retrieval in a group, organization, or societal context; and proposes a method that measures relevance based on group/peer consensus. Reports results of an experiment using this method to compare the search performance of different types of…

Investigates the use of criteria to assess relevant, partially relevant, and not-relevant documents in information retrieval. Analysis revealed 29 criteria used by graduate students when selecting passages that contributed or detracted from a documents' relevance, the two most frequent being content and criteria characterizing the full text…

Addresses the implications of the new Web metalanguage XML for searching on the World Wide Web and considers the future of XML on the Web. Compared to HTML, XML is more concerned with structure of data than documents, and these data structures should prove conducive to precise, context rich searching. (Author/LRW)

Describes a study that explored aspects of successive Dialog searches conducted by intermediaries for information seekers. Results show most successive searches involve some change in search terms and databases, but precision did not necessarily increase and the percentage of relevant items decreased significantly after three searches. (Author/LRW)

A study to determine the value to humanists of a thesaurus integrating free-text terms from the humanities and social sciences found a high degree of overlap, suggesting that such a thesaurus would be useful to scholars in both disciplines. Results also demonstrated that combining controlled vocabulary and free-text term searching yielded more…

Describes specialty or vertical Web search engines that may provide more relevant results for information retrieval. Highlights include regional services, including filtering by domain and custom crawling; language searching; family-safe listings, including the pros and cons of filtering; news searches; and subject-oriented searching. (LRW)

Presents an algorithm for computation of discrimination values in automatic construction of dictionaries for information retrieval. (Author/PF)

Describes a new graphical method of storing and retrieving concept relations of various kinds. (Author/PF)

The article shows the effect of the irregularity of using separate symbols on search noise on punch cards with superimposed symbol coding in information-search system (IPS). A binomial law of random value distribution of repetition of each symbol is established and analyzed. A method of determining the maximum value of symbol repetition is…

The indirect retrieval method proposed by Goffman is outlined and some similarities to other retrieval methods are indicated. The method is then evaluated and the results are compared with those obtained on the same document collection with cluster-based retrieval using single-link clustering. (Author)

The Editor in Chief of Collier's Encyclopedia relates his life and times and trials and tribulations as an encyclopedist. (NH)

Describes this perspectives issue that was designed to provide an historical background to visualization in information retrieval. Topics include knowledge, digital technology, the first visual interface to a collection at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), theoretical foundations, and applications. (LRW)

Presents an approach to document ranking that explicitly addresses the word mismatch problem between a query and a document by exploiting interdocument similarity information, based on the theory of concept lattices. Compares information retrieval using concept lattice-based ranking (CLR) to BMR (best-match ranking) and HCR (hierarchical…