bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
THE RATES OF ASSIGNMENT OF THESAURUS TERMS IN THE ERIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM: AN ANALYSIS OF HIERARCHIES AND LEVELS
Authors: HENRY GEORGIANNA , DIODATO VIRGIL
Published: January 2008

The study examined the rates of use of descriptors in the ERIC system during 1966–1986 to determine if certain levels of terms were used more than others and if patterns of use were similar among hierarchies in the ERIC Thesaurus. The postings per document measure indicated how often a term had been assigned to documents during its life. This was averaged for each level in the 252 multilevel hierarchies. With little exception there was not much variation in postings per document among levels nor among hierarchies. The major exception was the mean rate of 725 postings per 100,000 documents for the broadest terms in the twenty‐nine hierarchies having four levels each. This rate was significantly higher than for the narrowest levels in these hierarchies. The lack of variation in most hierarchies suggests that all terms currently in the system are important and used by indexers. Searchers should be aware of the power of the broadest terms.
RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES: THE CASE FOR ARGUMENTATIONAL ANALYSIS IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: KIRCZ JOOST G.
Published: January 2008

In this paper the extent to which modern indexing and information retrieval research meets the needs and requirements of different types of readers is criticised. A review of the stagnation in this field gives evidence for the need for a radically different approach. The main problem is identified as the assumption that knowledge contained in a scientific article can be represented by a semantic network only, and therefore can be manipulated by formal logic approaches. Complementary to this, a plea is made to start an argumentational analysis of the — highly structured — corpus of scientific articles (mainly in physics). Such an analysis might lead to an argumentational syntax which will also enable the non‐expert to browse through large quantities of electronically stored articles. A first attempt at such an approach is given. Furthermore the possible use of the Standard General Markup Language (sgml) approach in relation to a hypertext environment for a possible application is discussed.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Authors: BAKER DAVID
Published: January 2008

This study aims to review the present funding pattern of UK university libraries at a time of considerable change. The study begins with a general introduction describing recent political and funding trends in higher education. This is followed by a short section outlining the major issues facing university libraries over the next few years. The main part of the study is based on a questionnaire survey carried out in late 1990 and an analysis of the findings. The questionnaire is reproduced as appendix 1.
BALANCED OUTLINES AND HYPERTEXT
Authors: RADA ROY , YOU GEENG‐NENG
Published: January 2008

Navigation problems in a hypertext might be reduced, if multiple, coherent views of the hypertext were available. Document outlines help readers appreciate the structure and meaning of the document. We propose measures of syntactic and lexical balance in an outline and show in a sample of documents the degree to which these balances occur. Based on balance in an outline, a method for semi‐automatically generating an alternative outline is applied to one textbook. The textbook with both its original and its alternative outline is available in hypertext, and subjects who were asked to evaluate this hypertext noted that the alternative outline would help readers compare concepts in the textbook. The computer programs for generating outlines have been used in several writing tasks, including the writing of this paper.
PATTERNS OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors: CRONIN BLAISE , MCKENZIE GAIL , STIFFLER MICHAEL
Published: January 2008

Personal acknowledgements are commonplace in the scholarly communication process. The scale and significance of the phenomenon vary from field to field, and from journal to journal. Variation in practice is revealed in a twenty‐year analysis of acknowledgements in four of the top‐ranked information/library science journals (1971–1990). A small number of individuals are highly acknowledged; a majority are mentioned infrequently, if ever. The concentration is similar to that found in citation analyses of research productivity. There is a positive rank order correlation between frequency of acknowledgement and citation frequency. The implications for both institutional and individual evaluation are discussed.
THE CONCEPT OF ‘SUBJECT’ IN INFORMATION SCIENCE
Authors: HJØRLAND BIRGER
Published: January 2008

This article presents a theoretical investigation of the concept of ‘subject’ or ‘subject matter’ in library and information science. Most conceptions of ‘subject’ in the literature are not explicit but implicit. Various indexing and classification theories, including automatic indexing and citation indexing, have their own more or less implicit concepts of subject. This fact puts the emphasis on making the implicit theories of ‘subject matter’ explicit as the first step. A very close connection exists between what subjects are, and how we are to know them. Those researchers who place the subjects in the minds of the users have a conception of ‘subject’ different to that possessed by those who regard the subject as a fixed property of the documents. The key to the definition of the concept of ‘subject’ lies in the epistemological investigation of how we are going to know what we need to know about documents in order to describe them in a way which facilitates information retrieval. The second step therefore is an analysis of the implicit epistemological conceptions in the major existing conceptions of ‘subject’. The different conceptions of ‘subject’ can therefore be classified into epistemological positions, e.g. ‘subjective idealism’ (or the empiric/positivistic viewpoint), ‘objective idealism’ (the rationalistic viewpoint), ‘pragmatism’ and ‘materialism/ realism’. The third and final step is to propose a new theory of subject matter based on an explicit theory of knowledge. In this article this is done from the point of view of a realistic/materialistic epistemology. From this standpoint the subject of a document is defined as the epistemological potentials of that document.
AN APPLICATION OF LANGUAGE PROCESSING FOR A SEARCH INTERFACE
Authors: VICKERY BRIAN , VICKERY ALINA
Published: January 2008

The paper describes techniques developed by Tome Associates to process natural language queries into search statements suitable for transmission to online text database systems. The problems discussed include word identification, the handling of unknown words, the contents and structure of system dictionaries, the use of semantic categories and classification, disambiguation of multi‐meaning words, stemming and truncation, noun compounds and indications of relationship between search terms.
NORMALISED IMPACT FACTOR
Authors: SEN B.K.
Published: January 2008

Describes how the idea of normalised impact factor came into being and the method of its determination. In all, five properties of the normalised impact factor have been identified and described. It is observed that the ranking of a journal in its own category is better revealed by the normalised impact factor and the average normalised impact factor seems to provide better indication of the comparative performance of a set of laboratories engaged in diverse areas of research.
ARGUMENTATION‐BASED INDEXING FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FROM LEARNED ARTICLES
Authors: SILLINCE J.A.A.
Published: January 2008

Current indexing methods used in automated bibliographic and full text information retrieval assume that knowledge can be adequately represented as a semantic network which is manipulable by means of Boolean operators. However, this semantic approach requires the user to state formally what it is that he wants to find. This paper presents an alternative argumentation‐based method. It involves representing a learned article by means of rhetorical structure rather than by a semantic representation of content.
AN EVALUATION OF AUTOMATIC QUERY EXPANSION IN AN ONLINE LIBRARY CATALOGUE
Authors: HANCOCK‐BEAULIEU MICHELINE , WALKER STEPHEN
Published: January 2008

An automatic query expansion (AQE) facility in an online catalogue was evaluated in an operational library setting. The Okapi experimental system had other features including: ranked output ‘best match’ keyword searching, automatic stemming, spelling normalisation and cross referencing as well as relevance feedback. A combination of transaction log analysis, search replays, questionnaires and interviews was used for data collection. Findings show that contrary to previous results, AQE was beneficial in a substantial number of searches. User intentions, the effectiveness of the ‘best match’ search and user interaction were identified as the main factors affecting the take‐up of the query expansion facility.
TOWARDS A NEW EMPHASIS ON ORAL TRADITION AS AN INFORMATION SOURCE IN AFRICAN LIBRARIES
Authors: ALEMNA A.A.
Published: January 2008

Large numbers of Africans still living in rural areas are considerably influenced by oral tradition. A lot of information can therefore be obtained through this form of communication. However, this kind of material has been largely neglected by librarians in Africa. Although a few centres exist in some countries where the oral tradition is collected, organised and disseminated, a number of obstacles prevent these centres from achieving their aims. The activities of some of these centres are discussed and some of the associated problems highlighted, with proposals made for their solution. The paper concludes that librarians in Africa must place a greater emphasis on oral tradition as a supplement to documentary sources. Oral tradition is an integral part of the African's heritage and it would be criminal to let it disappear.
THE NORMS OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IN FOUR HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DISCIPLINES
Authors: CRONIN BLAISE , MCKENZIE GAIL , RUBIO LOURDES
Published: January 2008

The scale and nature of acknowledgement behaviour was investigated in four academic disciplines: history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Data were derived from four high‐ranking scholarly journals over a twenty‐year period. More than 5,600 acknowledgements were classified using a six‐part typology. Cross‐disciplinary similarities and differences were observed. Populations of highly acknowledged individuals were identified for each discipline. The frequency distributions of acknowledgements exhibited high levels of concentration. Authors' acknowledgement behaviours were highly consistent.
LET DOCUMENTS TALK TO EACH OTHER: A COMPUTER MODEL FOR CONNECTION OF SHORT DOCUMENTS
Authors: CHEN Z.
Published: January 2008

In a discussion concerning the future of the library, Minsky and Feigenbaum endorsed the idea for books to ‘talk to each other’. Creating knowledge or doing inference by connecting related documents is an important aspect of undiscovered public knowledge, an important concept initiated by Swanson. However, so far few computer models exist in this regard. In this paper, we describe such a model which connects documents. We first explain the meaning of integration of scientific texts by connecting documents. Our fundamental idea is then illustrated by an example and further described by a model. Some features of this model are discussed. A brief comparison with some other computer models is also provided.
THE LIBRARY AS INFORMATION PRODUCER: THE CASE OF THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH LIBRARY AND DOCUMENTATION CENTRE IN MALAWI
Authors: LIPPMAN M.J.
Published: January 2008

Libraries are often known solely as collectors of information. As a non‐productive branch of an organisation, libraries can have a hard time justifying the increasingly higher costs of information materials and making that information available to users. This paper describes a USAID funded project at the Ministry of Health Library and Documentation Centre, Malawi, which reverses the stereotypical role of library as information collector to library as producer of information by using desk‐top publishing and CD‐ROM technology that has become more readily available in recent years.
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL BASED ON CONCEPTUAL DISTANCE IN IS‐A HIERARCHIES
Authors: HO LEE JOON , HO KIM MYOUNG , JOON LEE YOON
Published: January 2008

There have been several document ranking methods to calculate the conceptual distance or closeness between a Boolean query and a document. Though they provide good retrieval effectiveness in many cases, they do not support effective weighting schemes for queries and documents and also have several problems resulting from inappropriate evaluation of Boolean operators. We propose a new method called Knowledge‐Based Extended Boolean Model (kb‐ebm) in which Salton's extended Boolean model is incorporated. kb‐ebm evaluates weighted queries and documents effectively, and avoids the problems of the previous methods. kb‐ebm provides high quality document rankings by using term dependence information from is‐a hierarchies The performance experiments show that the proposed method closely simulates human behaviour.
CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF LIBRARIES HELD BY FACULTY, ADMINISTRATORS, AND LIBRARIANS: AN EXPLORATION OF COMMUNICATIONS IN THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Authors: NITECKI DANUTA A
Published: January 2008

Letters and opinions published in the Chronicle of Higher Education were analysed to identify metaphors relating to libraries used by faculty, academic administrators and librarians. Metaphors used in communications are assumed to reflect conceptual models held by the communicators. The qualitative methodology used in this study was built on the works of Schön, Reddy and Green. In this exploratory study, fourteen models of libraries were identified through linguistic examination of the appearance of the word stem ‘librar’ among published communications from academics. Differences were found in the conceptual models of libraries held among faculty, academic administrators and librarians. The study's findings suggest that to administrators in this case, libraries are contributors to the social structure of an academic environment, while to faculty, libraries are the repository for physical information resources to support their research. Librarians in the study tend to attribute an activist role to libraries, and to express a conceptual model of a library as a storehouse. The identification of metaphors about libraries, cited by academics, offers library managers insights into academic library users' conceptualisation of libraries.
A PRINCIPLE OF UNCERTAINTY FOR INFORMATION SEEKING
Authors: KUHLTHAU CAROL C.
Published: January 2008

This paper proposes an uncertainty principle for information seeking. The principle is based on the results of a series of studies conducted by the author into the user's perspective of the information search process. A basic principle of uncertainty is elaborated by six corollaries. The principle is proposed to explain the constructive process of information seeking and use bringing affective considerations to what has usually been regarded as a cognitive process.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION THE COMPLEXITIES OF CITATION PRACTICE: A REVIEW OF CITATION STUDIES
Authors: LIU MENGXIONG
Published: January 2008

The use of bibliographic citation is a crucial aspect in the creation and dissemination of information. Numerous studies have been done ranging from simple citation counts to more complex bibliographic coupling studies, and from citation classifications to citation motivation studies. This review focusses on the citation studies that have explored the complexities and the underlying norms of the citation process. The major emphasis is placed upon the studies which have dealt with citation functions, citation quality, citation concepts and citation motivation. The international perspectives of citation practice are also discussed.
A STATE SECRET — DISSERTATIONS IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Authors: MERTENS LOTHAR
Published: January 2008

Since the early 1970s the communist regime in the German Democratic Republic classified thousands of doctoral dissertations as confidential, thus blocking the dissemination of research in the various disciplines of science. More than 6,800 titles of dissertations have not been listed in the national bibliographies. This article seeks to give a first overview of the different fields of restricted research and the topics which have been treated as state secrets. The study also shows the involvement of universities and colleges in the classification and segregation of theses into special depots and non‐public reading rooms.
INFORMATION NEEDS OF HOSPITAL PATIENTS: A SURVEY OF SATISFACTION LEVELS IN A LARGE CITY HOSPITAL
Authors: CAMERON PAULINE , CORBETT KATE , DUNCAN CLARE , HEGYI KAREN , MAXWELL HELEN , BURTON PAUL F.
Published: January 2008

The study presents the principal results of a survey into patient information needs and satisfaction levels in a large general hospital as part of a feasibility study on the provision of a patient information service. The background to the survey is the change in the patient/doctor relationship to one of consumer/supplier, coupled with the growing awareness of the importance of patient education and information as a form of preventive medicine. The survey found that information given prior to admission increased satisfaction rates for information provision generally, but also led to more questions being asked during the stay in hospital. Patients were given information freely, though there are slight gender differences, and there is a preference for verbal rather than written information from doctors. There are implications for patient information services. A range of patient resources is provided by wards, but there are problems of co‐ordination of supply and the human resources needed to manage them effectively.
ON THE CREATION OF HYPERTEXT LINKS IN FULL‐TEXT DOCUMENTS: MEASUREMENT OF INTER‐LINKER CONSISTENCY
Authors: ELLIS DAVID , FURNER‐HINES JONATHAN , WILLETT PETER
Published: January 2008

An important stage in the process of retrieval of objects from a hypertext database is the creation of a set of inter‐nodal links that are intended to represent the relationships existing between objects; this operation is often undertaken manually, just as index terms are often manually assigned to documents in a conventional retrieval system. Studies of conventional systems have suggested that a degree of consistency in the terms assigned to documents by indexers is positively associated with retrieval effectiveness. It is thus of interest to investigate the consistency of assignment of links in separate hypertext versions of the same full‐text document, since a measure of agreement may be related to the subsequent utility of the resulting hypertext databases. The calculation of values indicating the degree of similarity between objects is a technique that has been widely used in the fields of textual and chemical information retrieval; in this paper, we describe the application of arithmetic coefficients and topological indices to the measurement of the degree of similarity between the sets of inter‐nodal links in hypertext databases. We publish the results of a study in which several different sets of links are inserted, by different people, between the paragraphs of each of a number of full‐text documents. Our results show little similarity between the sets of links identified by different people; this finding is comparable with those of studies of inter‐indexer consistency, where it has been found that there is generally only a low level of agreement between the sets of index terms assigned to a document by different indexers.
INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO THE CONCEPT AND PRACTICE OF WRITTEN TEXT DOCUMENTARY CONTENT ANALYSIS (WTDCA)
Authors: PINTO MOLINA MARÍA
Published: January 2008

Content analysis, restricted within the limits of written textual documents (wtdca), is a field which is greatly in need of extensive interdisciplinary research. This would clarify certain concepts, especially those concerned with ‘text’, as a new central nucleus of semiotic research, and ‘content’, or the informative power of text. The objective reality (syntax) of the written document should be, in the cognitive process that all content analysis entails, interpreted (semantically and pragmatically) in an intersubjective manner with regard to the context, the analyst's knowledge base and the documentary objectives. The contributions of semiolinguistics (textual), logic (formal) and psychology (cognitive) are fundamental to the conduct of these activities. The criteria used to validate the results obtained complete the necessary conceptual reference panorama.
THE NUMBER OF AUTHORS PER ARTICLE IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE CAN OFTEN BE DESCRIBED BY A SIMPLE PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION
Authors: ROUSSEAU RONALD
Published: January 2008

Ajiferuke showed that observed author distributions can best be described by a shifted inverse Gaussian‐Poisson distribution. Yet, in the framework of a model to explain observed fractional distributions of authors it is important to know whether a simple one‐parameter distribution such as a geometric or a truncated Poisson can adequately describe observed author distributions, at least in those fields where the single author is still dominant. In this article it is shown that for the field of information science this is indeed the case.
INTERACTION INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: DOMINICH SÁNDOR
Published: January 2008

In existing information retrieval models there are three different ways documents are represented for retrieval purposes: vectors of weights, collections of sentences and artificial neurons. Accordingly, retrieval depends on a similarity function, or means an inference, or is a spreading of activation. Relevancy is considered to be a critical modelling parameter which is either a priori or it is not treated at all. Assuming that relevancy may equally be an emergent entity, thus not requiring any a priori modelling, the paper proposes the Interaction Information Retrieval model in which documents are interconnected, queries and documents are treated in the same way, and in which retrieval is the result of the interconnection between query and documents. Algorithms and experiences gained with practical applications are presented. A theoretical mathematical formulation of this type of retrieval is also given.
DOCUMENTATION NOTE QUERY‐DOCUMENT SYMMETRY AND DUAL MODELS
Authors: ROBERTSON S.E.
Published: January 2008

The idea that there is some natural symmetry between queries and documents is explored. If symmetry can be assumed, then it leads to a conception of ‘dual’ models in information retrieval (given a model, we can construct a dual model in which the roles of documents and queries are reversed). But symmetry breaks down in various ways, which may invalidate this construction. If we can construct a dual, it is not obvious that it can be combined with the original.
EDITORIAL
Authors: KIMBER RICHARD
Published: January 2008

The first quarterly issue of The Journal of Documentation was published in June 1945. In an introductory note the first editor, Theodore Besterman, defined a document as ‘anything in which knowledge is recorded’ and documentation as ‘any process which serves to make a document available to the seeker after knowledge’. His experience indicated that librarianship and bibliography, … classification and filing [and] photographic and mechanical methods of reproduction would be some of the channels of documentation which would guide knowledge to the enquirer. His foresight warned him that there would be many other channels. His ambition was that the new journal's attention would not be limited by national boundaries. His wisdom, acknowledging the unpropitious nature of the post‐war times, advised a quiet beginning for such a universal undertaking.
USING GREY LITERATURE IN INFORMAL INFORMATION SERVICES IN AFRICA
Authors: STURGES PAUL
Published: January 2008

There are increasing numbers of experiments (in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Benin, Senegal, Botswana and Zimbabwe) with informal community information services dealing with health, hygiene, child care, cultivation, stock‐rearing, trades, crafts and repair work, in the way in which surveys show that citizens require. Conventionally published material is in very short supply and seldom has relevant content. Extension services, and sometimes libraries, in local communities make use of such materials as are available, whether printed in leaflet, pamphlet, newspaper, poster or flipchart form, or deliver information orally, on tape, filmstrip, or in the form of song, story or dramatic presentation. Preliminary investigations show that the mechanisms for obtaining appropriate information to repackage for this type of use, and the capacity to carry out the repackaging exercise, are poorly developed in most of Africa. The official publications, reports, planning and policy documents from non‐governmental organisations, development agencies, aid and charitable organisations and research centres, which contain this information, are poorly represented in the holdings of national library systems, research collections or government agencies. Equally significantly, such institutions are not oriented in the dynamic way required to permit an effective repackaging exercise. There are, however, a few examples of appropriate arrangements for the acquisition, repackaging and distribution process which are cited as partial models of the way this work might be done.
INFORMATION SCIENCE OBSERVED: NEW MEDIA AND PRODUCTIVITY IN A GROUP OF UK PRACTITIONERS
Authors: DAVENPORT ELISABETH
Published: January 2008

The paper presents the results of the author's recent study of new media and productivity in a group of UK information scientists. The journal article was the primary focus of the study. Publishing was modelled in terms of stakeholder groups and analysed using a methodology from systems design, with the discipline of information science interpreted as a virtual site. The methodology used was qualitative, as the author intended to capture perceptions of social and economic practice, as well as descriptions of that practice. The outcome of the analysis is a profile of the group who were observed which is grounded in their perceptions of the publishing process, their perceptions of the research process, and their working habits.
HYPER‐BOOK: A FORMAL MODEL FOR ELECTRONIC BOOKS
Authors: CATENAZZI NADIA , SOMMARUGA LORENZO
Published: January 2008

This paper presents a model for an electronic book (hyper‐book). Hyper‐books are electronic books defined on the basis of the paper book metaphor. This metaphor guarantees ease of use and understanding, as the paper counterpart is a well known concept. The hyper‐book maintains many of the features of paper books, in terms of interface design and available tools (orientation, navigation, personalisation) and provides added‐value that exploits the technology underlying it, such as searching, links and history mechanisms. We give a formal definition of the hyper‐book model as a dynamic system. The hyper‐book model is defined in terms of structural and functional components. Further, how the system evolves under the effects of these functional components is presented. The structural components reflect the book subdivision in pages, and the page subdivision in elements such as text, figure etc. The functional aspect is indispensable for describing the use of a dynamic and interactive system. In particular, a number of operators, which represent reader services, allow the user to change the system ‘state’. This simple model is intuitive, general and easy to extend. The hyper‐book model has been implemented in a working system, and evaluated with a group of users. The evaluation has confirmed that the adoption of the book metaphor is very effective, as it guarantees ease of using and understanding the system. The use of the hyper‐book model for organising and presenting electronic documents could have a considerable impact in the context of electronic publishing. A system, based on this model, could have a large applicability and diffusion in several fields such as electronic libraries, thanks to its user‐friendly interface.
DOCUMENTATION NOTE DRUG INFORMATION FOR PATIENTS: DO WE KNOW THE ANSWER?
Authors: FARMER JANE , VAN HENGEL JENNIFER
Published: January 2008

Under the Patient's Charter, The National Health Service has an obligation to become more responsive to the needs of patients. These needs have been shown by research to include the provision of good quality information, both oral and written, about patients' drugs. The provision of such information has been shown to increase compliance, patient satisfaction and confidence of patients in coping with their illness, drugs and any side‐effects. The information in this article was gathered as a preliminary to further research. It combines a review of the literature with information from a series of informal interviews with members of the local healthcare team. The article looks at where patients get drug information from, then moves on to examine the value of providing such information. Issues arising in the provision of drug information are considered and recommendations are provided which indicate long term concerns and approaches for further work.
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL BY LOGICAL IMAGING
Authors: CRESTANI F. , VAN RIJSBERGEN C.J.
Published: January 2008

The evaluation of an implication by Imaging is a logical technique developed in the framework of modal logic. Its interpretation in the context of a ‘possible worlds’ semantics is very appealing for ir. In 1989, Van Rijsbergen suggested its use for solving one of the fundamental problems of logical models of IR: the evaluation of the implication d → q (where d and q are respectively a document and a query representation). Since then, others have tried to follow that suggestion proposing models and applications, though without much success. Most of these approaches had as their basic assumption the consideration that ‘a document is a possible world’. We propose instead an approach based on a completely different assumption: ‘a term is a possible world’. This approach enables the exploitation of term‐term relationships which are estimated using an information theoretic measure.
THE CORRELATION BETWEEN CITATION COUNTS AND THE 1992 RESEARCH ASSESSMENT EXERCISE RATINGS FOR BRITISH LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS
Authors: OPPENHEIM CHARLES
Published: January 2008

A citation study was carried out on all 217 academics who teach in UK library and information science schools. These authors between them received 622 citations in Social Scisearch for articles they had published between 1988 and the present. The results were ranked by department, and compared to the ratings awarded to the departments in the 1992 Universities Funding Council Research Assessment Exercise. Using the Spearman Rank Order Correlation coefficient, it was found that there is a statistically significant correlation between the numbers of citations received by a department in total, or the average number of citations received in the department per academic, and the Research Assessment Exercise rating. The paper concludes that this provides further independent support for the validity of citation counting, even when using just the first authors as a search tool for cited references. The paper also concludes that the cost and effort of the Research Assessment Exercise may not be justified when a simpler and cheaper alternative, namely a citation counting exercise, could be undertaken. The paper also concludes that the University of North London would probably have benefitted from being included in the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise.
THE DEPENDENCE OF LOTKA'S LAW ON THE SELECTION OF TIME PERIODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC AREAS AND AUTHORS
Authors: WAGNER‐DÖBLER ROLAND , BERG JAN
Published: January 2008

The Lotka distribution of the productivity of authors is highly dependent on the selection of the period of investigation. If many authors are covered only fractionally, the slope of the distribution is steeper than the slope of the distribution covering the complete publication output of a group of authors. We show this in a special branch of mathematics, namely mathematical logic from 1874 to 1990. If one compares authors with the same number of years spent in scientific activity, the characteristic form of the Lotka distribution completely vanishes. The time effect can be intensified if a scientific area features major expansion and the portion of new authors with few contributions is high; this is demonstrated in two special areas of logic. One may try to explain differences of the Lotka distributions of the phases of a scientific area by means of a simple learning model, taking into consideration that the learning curves of scientists in the birth, in the ‘pioneering’, and in the fulfilment stages of an area must be different.
THE CHANGING FACE OF CD‐ROM
Authors: TEDD LUCY A.
Published: January 2008

An overview of the developments in cd‐roms is presented. Aspects covered include changes in coverage, the use of cd‐roms in libraries and information units, changes in search interface and growth in end‐user searching, changes in cd‐rom publishers, hardware and networking developments.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION PICTORIAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: ENSER P.G.B.
Published: January 2008

This paper surveys theoretical and practical issues associated with a particular type of information retrieval problem, namely that where the information need is pictorial. The paper is contextualised by the notion of a visually stimulated society, in which the ease of record creation and transmission in the visual medium is contrasted with the difficulty of gaining effective subject access to the world's stores of such records. The technological developments which, in casting the visual image in electronic form, have contributed so significantly to its availability are reviewed briefly, as a prelude to the main thrust of the paper. Concentrating on still and moving pictorial forms of the visual image, the paper dwells on issues related to the subject indexing of pictorial material and discusses four models of pictorial information retrieval corresponding with permutations of the verbal and visual modes for the representation of picture content and of information need.
EDITORIAL
Authors: KIMBER RICHARD
Published: January 2008

In this issue are published two Briefs — using a new fast‐track route to publication. The first, reporting briefly on recent research by Fowell and Levy, we have categorised as a Research Brief. The second describes work applying new methodology to a management problem at the University of Sussex Library and it has been categorised as an Application Brief.
‘FACETS’ AS INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDISCOVERED PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE: S.R. RANGANATHAN IN INDIA AND L. GUTTMAN IN ISRAEL
Authors: BEGHTOL CLARE
Published: January 2008

Undiscovered public knowledge is a relatively unstudied phenomenon, and the few extended examples that have been published are intradisciplinary. This paper presents the concept of ‘facet’ as an example of interdisciplinary undiscovered public knowledge. ‘Facets’ were central to the bibliographic classification theory of S.R. Ranganathan in India and to the behavioural research of L. Guttman in Israel. The term had the same meaning in both fields, and the concept was developed and exploited at about the same time in both, but two separate, unconnected literatures grew up around the term and its associated concepts. This paper examines the origins and parallel uses of the concept and the term in both fields as a case study of interdisciplinary knowledge that could have been, but was apparently not, discovered any time between the early 1950s and the present using simple, readily available information retrieval techniques.
HYPER‐LIB: A FORMAL MODEL FOR AN ELECTRONIC LIBRARY BASED ON HYPER‐BOOKS
Authors: CATENAZZI NADIA , SOMMARUGA LORENZO
Published: January 2008

This paper presents hyper‐lib, a model for an electronic library. The hyper‐lib philosophy is based on reproducing the spatial environment of a physical library, in order to exploit users' knowledge of the physical domain in using the electronic system. In the library environment, rooms, shelves, books and services are reproduced by simulating a three‐dimensional environment, where the user can interact with a collection of documents as if he or she were in a physical library. In addition to the physical library features, the hyper‐lib introduces a number of new properties, which result from its non‐physical nature and allow some of the limitations of traditional libraries, such as availability of books and delivery time, to be overcome. The hyper‐lib books are available in electronic form, following the hyper‐book model, which is based on the book metaphor. A formal definition of the hyper‐lib model as a dynamic system is given. The hyper‐lib model is defined in terms of structural and functional components. Moreover, the functional behaviour, i.e. how the system evolves under the effects of the functional components, is presented. The library structural components include the book collection, the librarian, the access mechanisms etc. The functional aspect is indispensable for describing the use of a dynamic and interactive system. In particular, a number of operators, which represent user services, allow the user to change the system state. We distinguish among general services, which are offered in any room of the library, and specific services, which are specific to a particular object or room in the library, such as the librarian, the catalogues, the hyper‐books, the book shelves etc.
APPLICATION BRIEF
Authors: JACOBS N.A. , YOUNG R.C.
Published: January 2008

This paper describes the methodology and results of a study designed to compare figures derived from a questionnaire‐based book availability survey technique and from computer records of the use of the library's computer catalogue. Although several important differences emerge between the two sets of data, it is concluded that within specific limits the computer monitoring technique could act as a surrogate for book availability surveys.
THE EXPRESSION OF CONCEPTUAL SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONSHIPS: A COMPARATIVE SURVEY
Authors: GREEN REBECCA
Published: January 2008

The expression of conceptual syntagmatic relationships in document retrieval systems holds out hope for both increased discrimination (generally) and increased recall (in certain contexts). The inclusion of such relationships in retrieval systems requires both a structured inventory of relationships and some means of expressing them; this article examines the latter. To be fully effective, the expression of conceptual syntagmatic relationships must comply with criteria of systematicity, complexity, efficiency and naturalness. Unfortunately, the complex interaction of natural language means of expressing these relationships (lexicalisation, word order, function words and morphosyntactic cases) causes them to fail the systematicity criterion. Most document retrieval system means of expressing conceptual syntagmatic relationships (as exemplified by various term co‐occurrence techniques, links and role indicators) fail to comply with this and other of the criteria. Only gestalt structures simultaneously representing relationships, participants and roles (for example, frames) conform fully to the criterial checklist.
A PROVISIONAL NOTATION FOR DESCRIBING THE INFORMATION STRUCTURE OF DOCUMENTS
Authors: HEINE M.H.
Published: January 2008

A simple notation for describing the internal structure of a document is presented, and contrasted with other, more conventional notations for describing documents, in particular those related to subject‐classification systems and document description for bibliographic purposes, as well as with document metalanguage codes such as those of SGML. It is suggested such a notation should assist the science of human messaging through (1) permitting hypotheses to be more readily expressed and/or tested concerning document structure, and (2) facilitating the formation of taxonomies of documents based on their structures. Such a notation should also be of practical value in contributing to the processes of document specification, building and testing, and possibly also contribute to new generations of IR systems which link retrieval against record databases to the search systems internal to specific documents. It is suggested that, following formative criticism, professional standards for describing document structure should be sought based on the notation. The notation is at present limited to linear documents, but extensions to it to accommodate documents in non‐linear form (e.g. hypertext documents) and/or existing in physically distributed form, could usefully be constructed. Examples of the application of the notation are provided.
TOPICAL SUBJECT EXPERTISE AND THE SEMANTIC DISTANCE MODEL OF RELEVANCE ASSESSMENT
Authors: BROOKS TERRENCE A.
Published: January 2008

This paper reports two experiments that investigated the semantic distance model (SDM) of relevance assessment. In the first experiment graduate students of mathematics and economics assessed the relevance relationships between bibliographic records and hierarchies of terms composed of classification headings or help‐menu terms. The relevance assessments of the classification headings, but not the help‐menu terms, exhibited both a semantic distance effect and a semantic direction effect as predicted by the sdm. Topical subject expertise enhanced both these effects. The second experiment investigated whether the poor performance of the help‐menu terms was an experimental design artifact reflecting the comparison of terse help terms with verbose classification headings. In the second experiment the help‐menu terms were compared to a hierarchy of single‐word terms where they exhibited both a semantic distance and semantic direction effect.
WHO CITES WOMEN? WHOM DO WOMEN CITE?: AN EXPLORATION OF GENDER AND SCHOLARLY CITATION IN SOCIOLOGY
Authors: DAVENPORT ELISABETH , SNYDER HERBERT
Published: January 2008

The authors offer a brief analysis of citation practice in twenty‐five American sociological journals, in an attempt to explore claims that citation may show gender bias. Their work follows previous surveys of gender and citation and publication in the social sciences which suggest that women perform less well than men in both areas. The findings of this study suggest that there is indeed gender bias in citation in sociology, and the authors offer some hypotheses to explain the phenomenon that might be tested in further research.
CONCEPTUAL MAPPING OF A DATABASE IN THE HUMANITIES: FIRST RESULTS OF AN EXPERIMENT WITH SOPHIA
Authors: DARÁNYI SÁNDOR , ZAWIASA ROBERT , HAJNAL ZOLTÁN
Published: January 2008

The idea of conceptual mapping goes back to the semantic differential and conceptual clustering. Using multivariate statistical techniques, one can map a dispersion of texts onto another dispersion of their content indicators, such as keywords. The resulting configurations of texts/indicators differ from one another according to their meaning, expressed in terms of co‐ordinates of a semantic field. We suggest that by using principal component analysis, one can design a user‐friendly semantic space which can be navigated. Further, to learn the names of embedded magnitudes in semantic space, the idea of conceptual clustering is used in a broader context. This is a two‐mode statistical approach, grouping both documents and their index terms at the same time. By observing the agglomerations of narrower, related terms over a corpus, one arrives at broader, more general thesaurus entries which denote and conceptualise the major dimensions of semantic space.
STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE LIBRARY SERVICE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX: PRACTICAL QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY
Authors: JACOBS N.A.
Published: January 2008

This paper describes quantitative and qualitative research undertaken at the University of Sussex Library. The research was concerned to investigate the behaviour and motivations that led Library users to give puzzling responses in a user survey into book availability. The responses concerned the Library's Reserve Collection of key course texts. Hence the paper firstly sets out to describe the user survey, and then goes on to give an account of the qualitative research methodology employed to look beyond the survey results. This methodology involved semi‐structured interviews with students and tutors, which were analysed with the help of the software package QSR NUD*1st. The research uncovered interesting and useful information relating to the way Library users approach the Library service, a summary of which is included in the paper. The research methodology was found to be a valuable addition to the information gathering strategies of Library management, revealing patterns of user attitudes that are difficult if not impossible to access using traditional survey techniques alone.
SCIENCE AND SCHOLARSHIP ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB: A NORTH AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE
Authors: CRONIN BLAISE , MCKIM GEOFFREY
Published: January 2008

The potential significance of the World Wide Web for science and scholarship is analysed from informational, communication, and behavioural perspectives. Key factors to be taken into account are (i) scale, (ii) cost, (iii) conviviality, (iv) community, and (v) legitimacy. It is argued that the Web will have a transformative effect on the way scientists and scholars access information and present the results of their research to globally distributed peer communities
A STEMMING ALGORITHM FOR LATIN TEXT DATABASES
Authors: SCHINKE ROBYN , GREENGRASS MARK , ROBERTSON ALEXANDER M. , WILLETT PETER
Published: January 2008

This paper describes the design of a stemming algorithm for searching databases of Latin text. The algorithm uses a simple longest‐match approach with some recoding but differs from most stemmers in its use of two separate suffix dictionaries (one for nouns and adjectives and one for verbs) for processing query and database words. These dictionaries and the associated stemming rules are arranged in such a way that the stemmer does not need to know the grammatical category of the word that is being stemmed. It is very easy to overstem in Latin: the stemmer developed here tends, rather, towards understemming, leaving sufficient grammatical information attached to the stems resulting from its use to enable users to pursue very specific searches for single grammatical forms of individual words.
RESEARCH BRIEF RATES OF RETURN TO CITATION
Authors: CRONIN BLAISE
Published: January 2008

Research shows that the rates of return to citation are substantial in the context of the academic reward system. Since quantitative performance measures, notably publication and citation counts, are associated strongly with life‐cycle remuneration and career mobility, both should be utilised in research assessment exercises. This paper brings together empirical findings from the non‐interacting research literatures of economics and information science to make the case for using citation rates as a valid and cost‐effective proxy for quality in certain disciplines.