Describes a technique being developed for online instruction and assistance for bibliographic database searchers called Individualized Instruction for Data Access (IIDA). The objectives of the project are discussed, as well as the use modes and flow of control of the system, and seven references are included. (Author/BK)

Describes three criteria for evaluating indexing performances--quality, effectiveness, and consistency. The impracticality of effectiveness measurements and the unreliability of consistency measurements are discussed, and recommendations for assessing indexing quality are made. Two references are provided. (Author/BK)

Describes the use of relevance feedback to select additional search terms and discusses the extraction of these terms from a maximum spanning tree connecting all terms in the index term vocabulary; retrieval effectiveness for different spanning trees is shown to be similar. Eight references are included. (Author/BK)

By drawing an analogy to computer programming, it is apparent that end user training for online bibliographic search systems will increase, lead to vastly increased use of online search systems, increase the understanding of end users, and reduce the amount of time professionals spend on routine tasks. (CWM)

Describes a series of studies conducted to determine how ERIC online searchers were using free and controlled vocabulary in their search statements and to understand relevance implications of the resultant differences. (SW)

Presents MARC database statistics for use in planning and processing files, selection of subsets, and estimating file growth rates. Statistics are provided on record length, field tag occurrence, data element length per field tag, and distribution of records by Dewey Decimal Division and Library of Congress class code. (Author/RAA)

Examines alternative publishing modes used by authors of scholarly manuscripts not acceptable to established publishers: service publishing, on demand publishing, and ERIC. Proposes a national supplementary library of unpublished materials which would make manuscripts available upon demand. Discusses bibliographic control factors and criteria for…

Intended for novice searchers, this review of available materials comments on availability and cost, as well as the relationship between the search materials and the topic area of the file or the organizational type of the producer. An extensive bibliography is provided. (SW)

Demonstrates, with an example, a relatively simple method for fitting Bradford's law to empirical data to estimate the number of journals and articles in a subject collection. An exact discrete formulation illustrates Bradford's law as a special case of the Zipf-Mandlebrot "rank frequency" law. (Author/RAA)

Discusses underlying assumptions and prerequisites for information development in Arab countries. Administrative and environmental impediments which hinder the optimum utilization of available resources and suggestions for improvements are outlined. A brief bibliography is provided. (Author/RAA)

Described are in-house training courses developed and conducted at the U.S. General Accounting Office Library for online searching of the DIALOG, SCORPIO, ORBIT, and New York Times Information Bank retrieval systems. An appendix contains a course outline/schedule for the training program. (SW)

Provides a bibliography of articles and book reviews on machine translation, computational linguistics and information storage and retrieval. All items listed were published in "Babel" during the years: 1956, 1957, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979. (MES)

Exploring the use and effectiveness of current awareness (CA) methods, especially selective dissemination of information (SDI) among chemists at Canadian universities, this study focuses on the perceived dispersal of information, use of various CA methods, time spent on CA, perceived success in CA, and CA efficiency. (FM)

Online information systems used by congressional legislators for administrative support, correspondence control, information retrieval, and electronc voting are presented. Expansion of these systems to permit public access is discussed. (RAA)

Provides an overview of a training program for online searching used by the University of California's Computerized Information Services (CIS), focusing on database training through workshops and seminars. (FM)