Discusses how to teach students to evaluate information they find on the Internet. Highlights include motivation of Web site owners; link-checking; having student create Web pages to help with their evaluation skills of other Web sites; critical thinking skills; and helpful Web sites. (LRW)

Considers how reliable research can be conducted using a mutating phenomenon like the Web. Explores how reliably Web sources can be documented. Suggests that researchers should cite digital articles in databases where possible and consider avoiding references to online journals with print editions. (SG)

Discusses qualitatively enhanced access to data collections, requiring a more meaningful interface which endows the users with personal agents that are adaptable to the users' individual retrieval preferences. Users are given recommendations derived from best practice in information search processes to perform successful retrieval activities via…

Presents a single framework for conducting topic analysis that performs both topic identification and text segmentation. Key characteristics of the framework are: representing a topic by means of a cluster of words closely related to the topic; and employing a stochastic model, called a finite mixture model, to represent a word distribution within…

Successful symbolic capital formation in academia is commonly signified by the trappings of scholarly distinction or acknowledged status as a public intellectual. Compares three potential indices of symbolic capital: citation counts, Web hits, and media mentions. Findings, which are domain specific, suggest public intellectuals are notable by…

Discusses the relevance of communication, meaning, and identity in putting information work into a cultural context. The process of information seeking is discussed, the mediation of communication formats and devices in determining meaning is described, and implications for information specialists are suggested. (11 references) (LRW)

Describes the advantages of a prototype retrieval system that uses statistically based ranked retrieval of records rather than traditional boolean methods, especially for end users. Several new techniques are also discussed including bit mapping, pruning, methods of building inverted files, and types of search engine. (26 references) (EAM)

Presents an approach to automatic matching and linkage of citations between databases which applied 14 coding techniques and measured their effectiveness in terms of efficiency of retrieval of duplicates with minimal false hits, reliability, and performance. (EAM)

Discussion of information retrieval and the derivation of new knowledge from bibliographic databases focuses on medical journal literature. Topics discussed include the incomplete coverage of medical literature on databases; searching by free text or title words versus searching by assigned subject headings; and the implications of these factors…

Describes research which examined whether there are clusters of non-library and information science (LIS) databases that contain citations of interest to LIS researchers, the conceptual relationships of those databases, and approaches to gathering data that might be used to develop search paths and database selection guides on particular LIS…

Surveys new developments in legal bibliographical documentation. Traces the development of database systems. Discusses the addition of personal computing to traditional information retrieval systems and the problems that this creates. Examines the most recent methods of information dissemination--the CD-ROM and Hypertext systems. (RW)

Describes an interface mechanism called "complex view support" to be used with a relational database system (RDBS) in supporting increasingly complex distributed environments in automated library systems. The interface system refers queries to multidimensional tables as well as to flat tables on RDBS and is shown to efficiently support…

Recent, far-reaching developments in the provision and retrieval of educational information in the United Kingdom are described, focusing on changes to an established research tool, the British Education Index, and the new British Education Thesaurus, modeled on the ERIC Thesaurus. Technological advancements are also considered. (Author/MSE)

Describes experiments that compared a new method for automatically analyzing semantic structures in text by statistical means with the standard vector space model. Findings indicate that combining both methods improved performance over either alone. The effects of other experimental variables on retrieval performance (term weighting, suffix…

Reviews several CD-ROM products displayed at the March 1989 International Conference on CD-ROM sponsored by Microsoft. Product capabilities for handling text, audio, images, and full motion video are described, and potential applications for information retrieval are discussed. (CLB)