Presents a socio-cognitive perspective in relation to information science and information retrieval. Topics include differences between traditional cognitive views and socio-cognitive views; a comparison of behaviorism, cognitivism, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience as approaches in psychology; information needs; relevance criteria; and…

Retrieval performance of the iso-content-based angle similarity measure within the angle, distance, conjunction, disjunction, and ellipse retrieval models is compared with retrieval performance of the distance similarity measure and the angle similarity measure. Results show the iso-content-based angle similarity measure achieves satisfactory…

The periodic TRECs (Text Retrieval Conferences) have reported the results of a variety of recall studies in large-scale document retrieval. While the efforts of TREC are noteworthy and laudable, there are reasons why its results, especially the recall values that are central to its conclusions, should be accepted with some caution. (Contains 17…

Focuses on participants' confidence in their judgments of the relevance of bibliographic records to particular research questions. Describes an empirical investigation of the association between participants' confidence and the number of categories for a relevance rating scale. Presents exploratory results involving gender effects and comparison…

Compares the search features and retrieval performance of three search engines for children: "Yahooligans!,""Ask Jeeves for Kids," and "Super Snooper" on identical searches. Retrieval performance criteria of the three engines included: retrieval output, relevance, overlap in results, and redundancy. Results shed light…

Presents an interaction model and an experimental method for information retrieval. This automated method helps identify which user and system variables are relevant, which are independent of other variables, and which ranges of the variables are most important. Results show that relevance feedback consistently improves retrieval performance. (AEF)

Describes an organization that supplies information for a fee on a free-lance basis. (PF)

Compares the ELHILL 2 and STAIRS programs with respect to on-line searching of the MEDLARS citation file by means of a chart showing the capabilities of the two programs. (Author/PF)

The binary search scheme is a method of finding a particular file from a set of ordered files stored in a computer. In this article an exact expression for the expected number of passes required to find a file is derived. (Author)

An experiment in superficial indexing was carried out to elaborate the contract between indexing with a controlled vocabulary and using automated methods as described by Salton. (Author)

Proof is given of the equivalence of Boolean and weighted search methods. (Author)

An approach to translation between natural language and an artificial language useful for information storage and retrieval is presented. (Author)

Most existing general record formats for bibliographical data are mainly designed for communication purposes but not for compact storing and efficient handling in an information retrieval system. Since bibliographic databases are well structured, the types of information that will appear in a specific record will vary only within a limited scope.…

The first sections give a detailed description for using the MARC II Search Program including: (1) general description, (2) implementation, (3) search criterion, (4) formation of retrieval statements, (5) list statement formation, (6) forming the retrieval request card deck, (7) errors and diagnostic messages, (8) MARC II search output file, (9)…