Discussion of intelligent information retrieval focuses on the use of Constrained Spreading Activation (CSA) techniques to search on the World Wide Web. Highlights include associative and ostensive information retrieval; hypertext links; query formulation; a prototype system that used CSA to search the Web; and results of an evaluation. (LRW)

Describes a citation analysis that examined the 28 best articles published from 1969-1996 in JASIS ("Journal of the American Society for Information Science")(ASIS 1999 Handbook and Directory, p.25). Results highlight single-authored works that are twice as long (16.21 pages) as the average article (8.93 pages), are cited and self-cited…

Develops and analyzes four algorithms for feature selection in the context of rough set methodology. Experimental results confirm the expected relationship between the time complexity of these algorithms and the classification accuracy of the resulting upper classifiers. When compared, results of upper classifiers perform better than lower…

Defines natural language processing (NLP); describes the use of NLP in information retrieval (IR); provides seven levels of linguistic analysis: phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, discourse, and pragmatic. Discusses the commercial use of NLP in IR with the example of DR-LINK (Document Retrieval using LINguistic Knowledge)…

Reports findings on user avoidance of the help menu. Identifies five characteristics that may make any help-access method attractive to users. Examines dialog-box help, pop-up help for tools, and several other help-access methods. (PA)

Discusses information visualization techniques and introduces a visual term discrimination value analysis method using a document density space within a distance-angle-based visual information retrieval environment. Explains that applications of these methods facilitate more effective assignment of term weights to index terms within documents and…

Describes empirical investigations of people's use of relevance criteria. Highlights include a laboratory experiment and a naturalistic study that explored the patterns of movement in use of relevance criteria during real-time document evaluation processes; criteria patterns; and a classification scheme and criteria taxonomy that may enable…

This paper studies the influence of question-related variables on Web users' choices of search strategy in the initial stage of a search. Discusses the results of a questionnaire and suggests implications for training Web users as well as future research on Web searching behavior. (Author/LRW)

Reviews content-based image retrieval and discusses the increase in large picture databases that are now available. Describes some of the proceedings from the Brighton (United Kingdom) conference, including the retrieval of video clips; discusses image indexing; and provides examples of image indexing and retrieval projects. (Author/LRW)

Discusses latent semantic indexing (LSI); considers the high cost associated with the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the large term-by-document matrix that becomes a barrier for its application to scalable information retrieval; and shows that information filtering using level search techniques can reduce the SVD computation cost for LSI.…

Discusses topological aspects of theoretical information retrieval, including retrieval topology; similarity topology; pseudo-metric topology; document spaces as topological spaces; Boolean information retrieval as a subsystem of any topological system; and proofs of theorems. (LRW)

Discussion of the vector space model and properties of document and query spaces focuses on the proof that requiring term independence to hold in the query space is inconsistent with the goal of achieving better performance by means of weighted retrieval. Proofs are provided. (Author/LRW)

Reports the results of two studies of undergraduates that tested an uncertainty expansion information retrieval device and an uncertainty reduction device in naturalistic settings, designed to be given at different stages of Kuhlthau's information search process. Concludes that the timing of the device interventions is crucial to their potential…

Highlights features of Copernic 2000, a desktop application that helps manage information from the Web more efficiently. Explains search capabilities that execute simultaneous queries in multiple search engines and ranks them by relevance; refining search options on retrieved Web sites; browsing capabilities; managing results with bookmarks;…

Discusses hierarchic document clustering in information retrieval and its potential improved effectiveness over inverted file search (IFS). Describes experiments conducted to determine whether hierarchic clustering can increase the retrieval effectiveness compared to both static clustering and of conventional IFS when it is applied to search…