Describes a prototype system for interactive knowledge-based indexing of the medical literature. Topics covered include current indexing practice; knowledge-based systems using frames; various types of assistance provided by the prototype system; and current research activities and plans for the development of the system. (17 references) (CLB)

Includes papers on: the history of academic, public, government, and corporate science and technology libraries; the past 35 years in information retrieval; and education for sci-tech librarianship. Other papers provide statistical data on science/engineering libraries and bibliographies of computer-aided design literature, sci-tech reference…

Discusses browsing in the particular context of visual and multimedia (e.g., videodisc) information databases and describes a working prototype system based on a fisheye view of documents in their context. Topics discussed include selecting and presenting information, exploratory access to information, artificial intelligence, user needs, and…

Critiques existing approaches to computerized support for browsing and describes four new types of browsers that have been implemented in the Xerox NoteCards hypertext system. These browsers support the process of pursuing and returning from digressions and facilitate the integration of diverse sets of materials that have been browsed. (16…

Describes exploratory experiments in evaluating and improving a thesaurus through studying its effect on retrieval. A formula was developed to measure the conceptual distance between queries and documents encoded as sets of thesaurus terms. Comparison to the performance of people judging conceptual distance shows that the formula accurately…

Examines the competitive intelligence approach to corporate information gathering, and discusses how it differs from the traditional library information center approach. Steps for developing a competitive intelligence system in the library information center are suggested. (33 references) (MES)

Business education in universities should include training in microcomputer-based information acquisition techniques. This paper describes some of the recent advances in the field of electronic data retrieval, assesses advantages and disadvantages, and offers suggestions for incorporating electronic data retrieval exercises into business classes.…

Presents a general overview of the development of Information Science Abstracts. The historical perspective, including the contributions of individuals and institutions, is discussed; its coverage is compared with that of other information science databases; and retrieval capabilities are described. (four references) (Author/CLB)

Discusses the use of logical imaging in information retrieval. Topics include the use of nonclassical logic in information retrieval; imaging and possible worlds semantics; retrieval by imaging; evaluation processes; worlds mass and worlds distance; and future work. (LRW)

The Internet, a network of computer networks, is leading the way to the information superhighway. Explains the basic features and various ways to get hooked up to the Internet. (MLF)

Discussion of index construction for large text collections highlights a new indexing algorithm designed to create large compressed inverted indexes "in situ." Topics include a computational model, inversion, index compression, merging, experimental test results, effect on retrieval performance, memory restrictions, and dynamic…

Describes a hierarchical text database model and defines an algebra based on concordance lists. The algebra is presented as a theoretical model to define both a conceptual schema for the database and search protocols for database implementation. Several retrieval examples are included. (19 references) (MES)

Investigates performance of online searchers using a prototype expert system that automatically reformulates queries to improve results and ranks retrieved passages to speed identification of relevant information. Results indicated that the system significantly reduced the number of queries needed, produced marginally significant improvements in…

Describes a research project in progress that is investigating the subject relationship between citing and cited documents for journals in the field of library and information science. Relevant literature is reviewed, and microanalysis and macroanalysis methods are explained. (50 references) (LRW)

Presents new methods for compressing bit matrices in large information retrieval systems which exploit possible correlations between rows of words and columns of documents. Three encoding methods are tested and compared--Shannon-Fano, arithmetic, and Huffman--and an appendix discusses binomial coefficients. (20 references) (LRW)