bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
STANDARD TIMES FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS: A METHOD FOR DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Authors: WILKIN A.P. , REYNOLDS R. , ROBERTSON S.E.
Published: January 2008

With a view to obtaining a set of standard times for information system operations, Aslib Research Department is developing and testing methods for collecting and analysing data on the time taken to perform certain operations. The current state of development of these methods is described. Data collection is by a self‐recording (diary) method, completed at the time of performing the operation. The major problem is one of identifying, describing, and analysing the effect of the various factors which might affect the time. First results indicate that it is possible to explain a large proportion of the variations in individual times by taking account of a sufficient number of variables.
THE SHANNON MODEL OF IR SYSTEMS
Authors: BROOKES B.C.
Published: January 2008

This note was evoked by the reference by Karen Sparck Jones to a paper by Zunde and Slamecka which has recently been reprinted in Introduction to Information Science, edited by Saracevic. Zunde and Slamecka purport to show that, for optimum performance of IR systems, the frequency distribution of descriptor terms should conform with a geometric progression. This result is at variance with the widely accepted result derived from the Shannon model which shows that optimum performance of an IR system occurs when the descriptor terms are equi‐probable, i.e. when their frequency distribution is uniform. The uncertainty arising from these two different solutions to the same problem clearly led Karen Sparck Jones to have some reservations about the theoretical justification for her interesting idea of weighting search terms to give them, in effect, the equal weights that the usual Shannon result demands for optimum performance. But Sparck Jones need have no such reservations. The result obtained by Zunde and Slamecka, though plausible because it has some fortuitous semblance to the distributions of terms found in real systems, is in fact erroneous.
SOME GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SPECIAL LIBRARIES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE UK
Authors: BHATTACHARYYA K.
Published: January 2008

Special libraries in science and technology constitute a vital link in the process of information transfer. A study of how special libraries in the UK are functioning at present is essential to any planning for a general improvement in their services and to heighten their contribution to the country's scientific and technological progress. This paper records the partial findings of a recent survey and is concerned with the identification and analysis of the essential elements of the framework within which special libraries work: such as, the nature of their management, major activity of the parent organization, subject‐specialization of the library's holding, documentation activity, staff‐structure, budget‐provision, size of library stock, and its growth rate, weeding‐out policy, etc. It brings out the wide variation in the behaviour pattern of special libraries in science and technology, belonging to different categories, e.g. libraries in private firms vis‐à‐vis government libraries, or basic research vis‐à‐vis applied research libraries. It also draws attention to areas of deficiency where action is needed.
ARE OBSOLESCENCE AND SCATTERING RELATED?
Authors: BUCKLAND MICHAEL K.
Published: January 2008

Considerable attention has been paid, in this journal and elsewhere, to each of two aspects of the use of literature. One of these is the relative decrease in use of material as it ages (‘obsolescence’) which has been discussed by Brookes and many others. The other aspect is the extent to which the use of material tends to be concentrated in a few titles (‘Bradford's Law of scattering’), which has been treated by Bradford, Leimkuhler, Brookes, and Fairthorne.
COMPUTER TYPESETTING AND INFORMATION
Authors: MARTIN DAVID
Published: January 2008

Computer typesetting is—or should by now be regarded as—an everyday technique which links the electronic digital computer and tape‐driven composing machines into a system which, on the one hand, can overcome the traditional limitations of the computer line printer and, on the other hand, may offer a more effective alternative to the manual compilation and composition of large‐scale publications.
THE ABERYSTWYTH INDEX LANGUAGES TEST
Authors: MICHAEL KEEN E.
Published: January 2008

Reports a laboratory comparison of the effectiveness and efficiency of five index languages in the subject area of library and information science; three post‐co‐ordinate languages, Compressed Term, Uncontrolled, and Hierarchically Structured, and two pre‐co‐ordinate ones, Hierarchically Structured and Relational Indexing. Eight test comparisons were made, and factors studied were index language specificity and linkage, indexing specificity and exhaustivity, method of co‐ordination, the precision devices of partitioning and relational operators, and the provision of context in the search file. Full details of the test and retrieval results are presented.
DUPLICATION IN UNION CATALOGUES
Authors: ARMS W.Y.
Published: January 2008

This paper uses figures of the overlap between eighteen libraries to develop a mathematical model of the duplication likely in a union catalogue. Two consequencescome from the model, that the percentage of unique items held by a library depends on the type of the library rather than on its size, and that for a homogeneous group of libraries the proportion of new titles added when extra entries are made to the catalogue tends to a value greater than zero. These consequences, which are supported by further data, suggest that the law of diminishing returns is much weaker than might be expected when building up a union catalogue.
A WEIGHTED RANK CORRELATION COEFFICIENT FOR THE COMPARISON OF RELEVANCE JUDGEMENTS
Authors: KAYE D.
Published: January 2008

The application of conventional rank correlation tests to the comparison of relevance judgements is outlined and their disadvantages are noted. A weighted rank correlation coefficient rw is proposed, which assigns variable weights to exchanges of rank on different parts of the scale. Examples of its computation are given, both for tied and untied ranks, and the values of rw for n=3 and n=4 are tabulated. The chief mathematical properties of the coefficient are investigated.
SOME PROPERTIES OF RELATIONSHIPS IN THE STRUCTURE OF INDEXING LANGUAGES
Authors: COATES E.J.
Published: January 2008

This discussion treats relational analysis as an alternative to the ‘categorical’ view of syntactic structures in indexing. It is suggested that the relational characterization of syntactic structures by reference to the meaning of the spaces between constituent terms may point the way to classification structures which are stable to new knowledge and discipline‐independent. Conversely the meaning‐protecting role of disciplinary domains has in the past relegated relational ideas to a peripheral significance in classification structures. General properties of syntactic strings, logical articulation, disarticulation, and linearization of branching relationships are discussed, together with the role of relational symbolism as noise in significant‐word based searches. Attention is next given to certain derivative relations which arise out of an inclusion relation between an isolated concept and the relation‐linked combination of which it forms a part. One class of these derivative relations is an explicit syntactic relation and its affiliation to other syntactic relations may throw light on the little understood nature and development of the content of personality facets.
MECHANIZATION, LIBRARIANSHIP, AND THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC ENTERPRISE
Authors: SHERA JESSE H.
Published: January 2008

‘Are you for or against microfilm?’ Alfred North Whitehead was once asked, and after a moment of reflection he replied in his high‐pitched voice, ‘What a curious question. Why should anyone be either for or against a tool?’ One is not for or against a hammer or a spade. The only question is, will the tool do whatever needs to be done effectively and efficiently? Yet, a mechanical innovation can become a cause célèbre, and an emotional battle is joined between antagonist and protagonist, each with his own band of ardent followers.
USER EVALUATION OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS
Authors: CLEVERDON C.W.
Published: January 2008

While Fairthorne may not have been the first person to recognize it, certainly, for this author, Fairthorne was the first to make explicit the fundamental problems of information retrieval systems, namely the clash between OBNA and ABNO (Only‐But‐Not‐All and All‐But‐Not‐Only). Although it was not until 1958 that the terms occur in Fairthorne's writings, the concept had been discussed in many meetings of the AGARD Documentation Panel and elsewhere. Originally it was considered that to meet these two requirements, it might be necessary to have two separate systems, and the test of the UNITERM system in 1954 was based on the hypothesis that a ‘Marshalling’ system (e.g. U.D.C.) was fundamentally different from a ‘Retrieval’ system (e.g. UNITERM). While the idea persisted in this form for some time, it gradually evolved into the inverse relationship of recall and precision, which is to say that while it is possible to obtain, of the relevant documents, All‐But‐Not‐Only, or alternatively to obtain Only‐But‐Not‐All, it is not possible to obtain All and Only.
ANALYSIS OF THE HEXAGON OF NOTIFICATION
Authors: MOOERS CALVIN N.
Published: January 2008

The papers by Robert A. Fairthorne are always both stimulating and challenging to me. Their insights and their obscurities are fascinating. While my own intellectual works have usually been quite separate from his, we have frequently shared a concern with many of the same topics in the principles of information work. These have included such topics as the mathematical basis of classification, applications of mathematical lattice theory, insights from Shannon's signalling theory (habitually misnamed ‘information theory’), and the delegation of retrieval.
FAIRTHORNE'S TRIADS AS AN AID IN TEACHING INFORMATION SCIENCE
Authors: BOHNERT LEA M.
Published: January 2008

It is pleasant to be able to welcome some theory in a social science field such as librarianship. It is especially pleasing when direct and forceful applications of the theory are fruitful. It is the intent of this paper to demonstrate to librarians how the theory of Robert Arthur Fairthorne can aid in systematizing the analysis and improvement of library operations. This demonstration has evolved during the teaching of information science courses in graduate library schools.
A STUDY OF CURRENT AWARENESS PUBLICATIONS IN THE NEUROSCIENCES
Authors: LANCASTER F.W.
Published: January 2008

Mailed questionnaires were used to study the use of two printed current awareness devices in specialized areas of the neurosciences, one manually prepared and the other a product of MEDLARS. The study determined who uses each publication, how much, for what purpose, and with what degree of success. A major purpose was to discover how valuable the publications are to users and what impact they have had on their own research or professional practice as well as on their information seeking behaviour. Comparisons are made between the results for the two publications. Some conclusions are drawn on information seeking behaviour in the neuroscience community and on requirements for effective current awareness services in this field.
FOUNDATION OF EVALUATION
Authors: VAN RIJSBERGEN C.J.
Published: January 2008

The mathematical theory of measurement is used to construct a framework for the evaluation of information retrieval strategies. The model arrived at is based on precision and recall. After a detailed examination of the kind of conditions the model can be expected to satisfy a plausible measure of effectiveness is derived. Finally, a number of other measures are shown to be special cases of it.
THE ANOMALOUS BEHAVIOUR OF PRECISION IN THE SWETS MODEL, AND ITS RESOLUTION
Authors: BOOKSTEIN ABRAHAM
Published: January 2008

M. H. Heine has shown that if one follows the retrieval procedure associated with Swets' model of an information retrieval system it is possible that the inverse relationship between Recall and Precision may not hold. In this paper we extend Heine's result to the case where the criterion‐parameter can assume discrete as well as continuous values. A plausible model of this kind is described and it is shown that for that model, Recall and Precision are in fact inversely related. The condition under which this relation may possibly not hold is then examined, and the conclusion is reached that this behaviour is an effect of the customary retrieval procedure, rather than anything intrinsic in the Swets model itself. An alternative logic is proposed in which the expected relationship is restored, as well as performance improved.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDEXING DEPTH IN DOCUMENTATION SYSTEMS
Authors: BIRD P.R.
Published: January 2008

Most documentation systems allocate a variable number of descriptors to their documents. From a consideration of indexing as a stochastic process it is suggested that the distribution of indexing depth in such a system might represent samples of a (truncated) mixed Poisson process. Examination of five different systems showed that indexing depth does appear to be distributed in this manner, since a reasonable fit to negative binomial distributions can be made statistically. Factors in the art of indexing which influence the distribution are discussed. As a first approximation the distribution of indexing depth, i, of a system, or of any subset of descriptors in it, is simple Poisson, p(i) = e−m(mi/i!), where m is the average depth of indexing. The results contradict previous reports that a log‐normal distribution of indexing depth is to be expected.
AUTOMATIC INDEXING
Authors: SPARCK JONES KAREN
Published: January 2008

This article reviews the state of the art in automatic indexing, that is, automatic techniques for analysing and characterising documents, for manipulating their descriptions in searching, and for generating the index language used for these purposes. It concentrates on the literature from 1968 to 1973. Section I defines the topic and its context. Sections II and III consider work in syntax and semantics respectively in detail. Section IV comments on ‘indirect’ indexing. Section V briefly surveys operating mechanized systems. In Section VI major experiments in automatic indexing are reviewed, and Section VII attempts an overall conclusion on the current state of automatic indexing techniques.
A COMPUTER SIMULATION MODEL OF LIBRARY OPERATIONS
Authors: THOMAS PAULINE A. , ROBERTSON STEPHEN E.
Published: January 2008

Aslib is interested in developing modular simulation models of aspects of library systems in order to investigate the use of such models as aids to systems design and operation. The conceptual model of library procedures, developed during the OSTI‐supportcd project on the use of bibliographic records in libraries, offered a suitable basis for a pilot study. The pilot study was aimed at investigating the practicality of developing and using simulation models of library operations, and gaining experience in the application of simulation techniques to problems in the library and information field. The simulation language used was GPSS, in accordance with the 1968 edition of the IBM GPSS/360 User's Manual, H20–0326–2.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: DAMMERS H.F.
Published: January 2008

The Editor, when requesting this paper had clearly in mind a historical survey based on the available literature, guided and coloured by the author's own views and experience in the field. As it has turned out, the paper is less of a survey and certainly not a critical and exhaustive one but more of a personal overview. As it is based on more than 15 years experience with computers in relation to information systems, one may hope that it will meet the Editor's expectation more than half‐way.
INNOVATIONS IN THE INDEXING OF CONTRIBUTIONS TO SERIES OF VOLUMES
Authors: EDWIN HOLMSTROM J.
Published: January 2008

The indexing of volumes made up of contributions by different authors raises questions which do not arise in indexing a treatise, a textbook, or a narrative by a single author. Such a book is a coherent whole. Its chapters, sections, and paragraphs are balanced so as to create in the reader's mind the pattern of knowledge or ideas and the distribution of emphasis the author intends. The language and style are uniform. The same special terms are used with the same meanings and implications throughout. All this makes it possible for the indexer to distinguish the wood from the trees and decide which kinds of trees call for more notice than others by scanning right through the book before he starts considering the details.
FARRADANE'S RELATIONS AS PERCEPTUAL DISCRIMINATIONS
Authors: NEILL S.D.
Published: January 2008

Farradane's categories of relations (Fig. 1) are viewed as percepts rather than concepts. It is argued that Farradane's original use of language supports this view. A comparison of Farradane's categories with perceptual discriminations in humans is attempted. The conclusion seems to support claims made for relational operators, whether those of Farradane or similar relational indexing devices as in PRECIS, to have the potential to act as metalanguages.
INDEX TERM INPUT TO IR SYSTEMS
Authors: GRIFFITHS JOSE‐MARIE
Published: January 2008

The index term input to three information retrieval systems has been analyzed in detail in order to form the input to a completely computerized simulation of an information retrieval system. The paper reports that, with certain reservations, index terms conform in general with the Bradford distribution.
THE EFFECT OF A LARGE‐SCALE PHOTOCOPYING SERVICE ON JOURNAL SALES
Authors: LINE MAURICE B. , WOOD D.N.
Published: January 2008

The proposition is examined that large‐scale photocopying, such as that practised by the British Library Lending Division, affects the sales of journals. There is little evidence of a reduction in journal circulation figures. In spite of large increases in journal prices (which have risen much faster, in terms of cost per page, than the Retail Price Index), university libraries have, since the NLLST was established, devoted an increasingly high proportion of their budgets to journals, though recent financial pressures are now forcing cancellations. An extensive survey of demand for journals at BLLD shows a heavy concentration on a relatively small number of titles, most of them well established journals, widely held by libraries and with large circulations. The demand for in‐print issues of the average journal is small. It is concluded, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that economic difficulties experienced by journal publishers and the increased demand on the BLLD are unrelated, though both owe something to the economic pressures on libraries.
MEASURES OF LANGUAGE EFFECTIVENESS AND THE SWETSIAN HYPOTHESES
Authors: HEINE M.H.
Published: January 2008

‘Language measures’ such as Swets's E or Brookes's S, which measure the separation of the PMFs defined by a weighting formula applied to the sets of relevant and non‐relevant documents, are different in kind to probabilistic ‘system measures’ such as Precision (P) and Recall (R). For a given query and collection the subset of {P} × {R} defined by varying the threshold is unaffected by monotonic transformations of the weighting formula used. If S is redefined so as to relate only to ranked probabilities it will retain its value, and so reflect this constancy in the graph, under such transformations. S, as redefined, is also an (approximate) indicator of a rule to retrieve documents with weights greater [less] than the threshold when S is positive [negative]. Language measures can also be used to determine the retrieval algorithm when multivariate weights are used.
INFORMATION SERVICES TO INDUSTRY: THE ROLE OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Authors: SCHWARZ STEPHAN
Published: January 2008

The TUL serves as an information centre, but is in fact a network node which is part of a shared pool. In spite of the decentralization of bibliographic data files the file‐managing documentation centre is still important in maintaining the efficient utilization of available resources. Changes in the management of Scientific and Technical Information Systems and Services may be counter‐productive if policy and planning move away from the broad view; e.g. cost‐effectiveness in the narrow sense cannot always be the condition for financial support. Professional ethics, especially in the distribution of responsibilities for selection and the use of available information, should receive more attention. Vital issues are research on needs for new services and education of both user and custodian in the exploitation of available information resources. This involves an active appreciation of the ethical content, its meaning and implications for professional conduct.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERNATIONALE BIBLIOGRAPHIE DER ZEITSCHRIFTENLITERATUR
Authors: BROADWIN JOHN A.
Published: January 2008

First, the historical development of the IBZ is described. Next, the procedure it uses in choosing the periodicals covered and unique method it employs in indexing journal articles is examined. Then, the IBZ's strengths and weaknesses as a general periodical index are evaluated. And finally, the viability of such bibliographical enterprises as the IBZ is discussed. Throughout the paper the IBZ is compared with other indexes and indexing systems.
CITATIONS, OBSOLESCENCE, ENDURING ARTICLES, AND MULTIPLE AUTHORSHIPS
Authors: CAWKELL A.E.
Published: January 2008

In 1974, citations to the literature of an earlier year, say 1966, will be to a relatively small number of ‘enduring’ articles, the remainder having been forgotten. The currently cited literature of a particular growing subject will consist of the ‘enduring’ literature of earlier years, and the recent literature some of which will endure and some of which will ‘die’. There willl be more citations to recent literature because there is more of it. A trend towards multiple authorship may be reducing the growth rate of published articles.
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SERVICES
Authors: URQUHART D.J.
Published: January 2008

I had somedifficulty in deciding what title to use for this note. Perhaps I should have called it ‘Economic Science and Information Science’ but I have an old‐fashioned prejudice against using the word ‘science’ for disciplines less rigorous than those of the natural sciences. Moreover, my real purpose is to examine how far we are justified in applying the concepts of economics to decisions about information services. Of course I appreciate that with the growing cost of information services and with the growing profusion of possible types of services it would be very useful if we could use the concepts of any discipline to make rational decisions about information services. If we could, then ‘information science’ would become truly ‘scientific’ in the sense I normally use that word.
WHITHER OUR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES? A PARTIAL VIEW OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH
Authors: GRAHAM MACKENZIE A.
Published: January 2008

Given the current situation of the world's developed nations, it is hardly surprising that the economical organization of libraries is an area of study which has aroused considerable interest over the past few years; a large amount of work has been done in both America and Britain, and a number of bibliographies and literature reviews have appeared (e.g. 1–4). No attempt will be made here to be similarly exhaustive, since the object of the Progress in Documentation series is to highlight only the most significant contributions to the current state‐of‐the‐art; a further self‐imposed limitation is that every item quoted should be, in the reviewer's opinion, either actually or potentially useful to the librarian‐at‐the‐shelf, who has to turn his mind to the practicalities of operating a real system. It is all very well to treat library management as an academic exercise, a way‐station in the career development of a management scientist, as we see in all too many published examples—one, which shall remain anonymous, produces some elegant models and manipulations, but openly admits that the data required to make them operable do not exist, and moreover could never be collected; but if the librarian cannot follow what the researcher is saying, or see any benefit from applying his results or methods, then from the practical point of view the research might as well not have been carried out or published. It is unfortunately true that there is a great gulf fixed between the two sides: the librarian neither understands, nor wishes to bother with, the detailed mathematical treatment of models, while the theorist is not interested in any problem which is conceptually simple, even though in practical terms it may be difficult to solve. What is needed in this area is common sense, the ability to think at large, untrammelled by received professional wisdom, and to relate the converging products of many separate disciplines to the problem in hand; this is why the research teams which have achieved the most significant results are those which contain a mixture of librarians and management scientists.
REDUNDANCY, RELEVANCE, AND VALUE TO THE USER IN THE OUTPUTS OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS
Authors: CLEVERDON C.W. , KIDD J.S.
Published: January 2008

A test was carried out to investigate the assumption that there is a significant level of redundancy (or notional overlap) between documents. The first part of the paper derives a measure of notional overlap, which is then applied to a test collection of 455 documents in the general subject area of computer applications to air traffic control. The conclusions were that notional overlap exists, but there appear to be very few cases of extreme redundancy, and at the document level, there is little possibility of practical application.
CITATIONS TO REVIEW SERIALS
Authors: WOODWARD A.M. , HENSMAN SANDY
Published: January 2008

It is generally agreed that the scientific review literature is of great value to both the scientific and lay communities. The combination of an overview of the progress of a scientific discipline and the simultaneous evaluation of the more important literature contributing to that development appears to be exceedingly powerful. There are many different types of review ranging from those which are not much more than an annotated bibliography to the seminal, almost monographic, work. Each review, to a variable extent, forms a comprehensive, reasonably up‐to‐date, single source of both didactic and bibliographic information which by its very nature provides an impressive time‐saving tool, particularly for the user searching for information in a somewhat unfamiliar area. Indeed in some disciplines, reviews appear to be used to a greater extent than abstracting and indexing services. The very usefulness of reviews also implies that a great deal of intellectual effort must be put into their production and again this varies considerably, being correlated with the final perceived quality of the review. The investments in intellectual effort may be estimated at 5 million man hours annually and total production costs are conservatively estimated at £65 million annually worldwide.
ON THE GENERATION AND SEARCHING OF ENTRIES IN PRINTED SUBJECT INDEXES
Authors: MICHAEL KEEN E.
Published: January 2008

After considering the search process and functions of index entries, a classification of entry types is offered, based on index term context, predominant term order, and between‐term function words. Then a multiple entry generation scheme is described, comprising rules for term manipulation, input and output. After discussing access points and cross reference measures, a preliminary linguistic analysis is given, showing links with psycholinguistics. The study forms the basis of a current laboratory investigation (EPSILON) into a number of entry types.
THE VARIATION IN THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF TITLES OF RESEARCH PAPERS WITH TIME AND DISCIPLINE
Authors: BUXTON A.B. , MEADOWS A.J.
Published: January 2008

The relative information content of titles of research papers in different subject areas has been examined by counting the number of their ‘substantive’ words in eleven English periodicals, two French and two German. Chemistry and botany (in which KWIC indexes are already produced) are found to have the highest values, followed by physics, medicine, history, and the social sciences, with philosophy lowest. The information content of the foreign titles when translated into English was almost equal to that of English titles in the same subjects. Most subjects showed a significant increase in the number of substantive words between 1947 and 1973. Some difficulties of searching by title due to the vocabularies of non‐scientific subjects are discussed.
EDUCATION OF USERS OF LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION SERVICES
Authors: STEVENSON MALCOLM
Published: January 2008

For a field approaching a critical period of reappraisal and rethinking of methods, user education is well served by secondary material. A definitive history of training in the use of the library by Bonn in 1960 has been followed by a steady flow of review articles on the subject. Tidmarsh in 1968 concentrated on instruction in the use of academic libraries. After briefly tracing the historical background in Britain and America she went on to describe developments in Britain in theory and practice following the proposals of the Library Association University and Research Section in 1949 for a three‐stage user education programme. She concluded her review with a discussion of the three main problems that were then, and to a certain extent still are, hampering the spread of user education—inadequate finance, lack of timetabled time, and indifference of academic staff. Mews reviewing developments in teaching the use of books and libraries, again with reference to British academic libraries for the period 1966–70, examined courses reported during that period paying particular attention to instruction for new students and undergraduates. Trends she noted included a move to the use of audio‐visual aids and to the appointment of information officers, bringing new opportunities for person‐to‐person enquiries. Surveying current practice in 1970 Pugh noted many difficulties faced by library instruction programmes at the time. These problems were taken up by Scrivener in a significant article describing instruction in library use as a persisting problem. ‘The welter of writing shows clearly the extent of interest in the subject and equally clearly that it is a problem (or complex of problems) to which no generally accepted solutions have been found.’ In America the approaches to teaching library skills to college students have been studied by Dudley, a study which included descriptions of two accredited courses at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California. More recently Givens after discussing the history of the role of the library in user education studied the educational developments of the ‘sixties and the libraries’ response. He discussed the componsnets of a user education programme and the rethinking and reorganization that would be required to achieve that programme.
THEODORE BESTERMAN: A PERSONAL MEMOIR
Authors: CARTER EDWARD J.
Published: January 2008

By Theodore Besterman's death on 10 November 1976 in his seventy‐first year, scholarship, bibliography and documentation and a wide range of esoteric subjects have lost a master of near fabulous achievement—how else, to note only two of his works, can one describe the 107 volumes of Voltaire's correspondence which he completed in twelve years as virtually a one‐man job, except for the help of an assistant for part of the time provided by the Swiss Foundation for Scientific Research, and the three editions of the World bibliography of bibliographies. To these great solo achievements as a scholar must be added his skill and discrimination as a collector, outstandingly of Voltaire editions and manuscripts and every Voltaire relic which he could procure as the material basis of the publications and activities of the Institut et Museé Voltaire in Geneva which was established solely through Besterman's creative efforts.
A NEW MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR SOVIET PUBLISHING: ASU‐PECHAT'
Authors: WALKER G.P.M.
Published: January 2008

The ‘automated management system’ ASU‐PECHAT' is the first of its kind to be applied to the publishing industry of an entire country. The first subsystems began operation in 1975. It is designed to supply information for the management of publishing, printing and the book trade throughout the USSR, with the intention of easing the tasks of a highly‐centralized administrative apparatus and of facilitating the supervision of the content of publications. Three subsystems are to handle finance, accounting and personnel records for the entire publishing‐printing‐bookselling sector, and three more will assist the internal planning of each subsector and the monitoring of its operations. They will be complemented by a further sub‐system to handle bibliographical data, and another to provide information services to staff working in the sector.
THEORIES AND MODELS IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: ROBERTSON S.E.
Published: January 2008

This paper is concerned with recent work in the theory of information retrieval. More particularly, it is concerned with theories which tackle the problem of retrieval performance, in a sense which will be explained. The aim is not an exhaustive survey of such work; rather it is an analysis and synthesis of those contributions which I feel to be important or find interesting.
THEORY OF THE BRADFORD LAW
Authors: BROOKES B.C.
Published: January 2008

The Bradford law is explored theoretically by means of a very mixed Poisson model which, it is claimed, elucidates the uncertainties surrounding the law and its applications. It is argued that Bradford succeeded in formulating an empirical regularity which has pure and hybrid forms but that all the variants can be subsumed under a simple logarithmic law which, for reasons explained, escapes exact expression in conventional frequency terms. The theoretical aspects discussed include the hybridity of form, estimations, sampling problems, the stability of ranks, homogeneity of data, and tests of significance. Some numerical examples, some simulated and some drawn from social contexts outside bibliography, are used both to illustrate theoretical issues and also to indicate the wide generality of the Bradford law. Possible applications and developments of the theory are indicated.
THE BRADFORD DISTRIBUTION THEORY: THE COMPOUNDING OF BRADFORD PERIODICAL LITERATURES IN GEOGRAPHY
Authors: AIYEPEKU WILSON O.
Published: January 2008

World periodical literature output in geography from 1970 to 1973 and the output concerning the USA, British Isles, France, and Germany for the same period are presented in three sets of Bradford‐Zipf bibliographs, while the verbal formulation of the law is translated into seven tables based on the same data. Results suggest that the convolution of correlated and uncorrelated Bradford distributions yields another Bradford distribution and that data conforming with the verbal formulation of Bradford's law do not automatically conform with the linear ideal of a Bradford bibliograph and vice versa.
SELF‐CITATIONS IN SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE
Authors: TAGLIACOZZO RENATA
Published: January 2008

The purpose of the present investigation was to determine to what extent authors of scientific articles cite their previous publications and what are the principal distinguishing features of this particular type of citation. We have analysed the bibliographies of a group of articles from the areas of plant physiology and neurobiology, and have examined the relationship of the self‐citations to some characteristics of the articles in which they occurred. We found self‐citations to be more recent and to be cited more frequently in the text of the citing articles than citations of other authors. The extent of self‐citing did not appear to be related to the number of co‐authors and to the bibliography size of the citing articles, or to their authors' productivity.
INFORMATION NEEDS IN LOCAL AUTHORITY SOCIAL SERVICES DEPARTMENTS: AN INTERIM REPORT ON PROJECT INISS
Authors: WILSON T.D. , STREATFIELD D.R.
Published: January 2008

Project INISS is the first major investigation of the information needs of social services staff in this country. This paper describes the origins of the project, the method employed in the first phase of the study, some of the findings, and implications for information services in these environments.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN SOME LOCAL CO‐OPERATIVE LIBRARY SCHEMES IN THE U.K.
Authors: SMITH NORMAN E.
Published: January 2008

The development of public, commercial and technical libraries, leading to the establishment of local schemes of library co‐operation is outlined. Current developments, activities and changes where applicable are discussed in some detail firstly in public‐library‐based schemes and secondly in college‐based schemes. The inauguration of SCOCLIS, early activities, period of inaction and more recent revival are described.
MACHINE TRANSLATION AND MACHINE‐AIDED TRANSLATION
Authors: HUTCHINS W.J.
Published: January 2008

The recent report for the Commission of the European Communities on current multilingual activities in the field of scientific and technical information and the 1977 conference on the same theme both included substantial sections on operational and experimental machine translation systems, and in its Plan of action the Commission announced its intention to introduce an operational machine translation system into its departments and to support research projects on machine translation. This revival of interest in machine translation may well have surprised many who have tended in recent years to dismiss it as one of the ‘great failures’ of scientific research. What has changed? What grounds are there now for optimism about machine translation? Or is it still a ‘utopian dream’ ? The aim of this review is to give a general picture of present activities which may help readers to reach their own conclusions. After a sketch of the historical background and general aims (section I), it describes operational and experimental machine translation systems of recent years (section II), it continues with descriptions of interactive (man‐machine) systems and machine‐assisted translation (section III), (and it concludes with a general survey of present problems and future possibilities section IV).
INDICES OF LITERATURE DISPERSION BASED ON QUALITATIVE ATTRIBUTES
Authors: HEINE M.H.
Published: January 2008

The dispersion or ‘scatter’ of documents over some set of values of a document attribute is usually described by means of a frequency distribution. When the attribute is qualitative an order distribution can be defined, as in the usual descriptions of Bradford's law. A more succinct description is offered by an order statistic, such as Singleton's index. A novel order statistic, the ‘adapted Gini index’, is introduced and related to the conventional form of Bradford's law. Some simple properties of it are described. An alternative index of dispersion, not an order statistic, based on the relative entropy of the frequency distribution is also defined. For sets of bibliographies such indices themselves have distributions, and it is suggested that, in particular, the distribution pertaining to an indexed data base provides an objective characterization of the data base in so far as indexing terms have been applied to the items in it. A variety of experimental data is reported. This includes the distribution of two indices for samples of bibliographies taken from British Technology Index and Index Medicus, and studies of the variation of the indices with time when the attribute is that of journal title. Whether a new area of knowledge becomes less or more dispersed in its journals as it progresses depends in part on which index is chosen to represent the dispersion, and on whether a series of cumulative or cross‐section bibliographies is chosen.
RECENT CHANGES IN PATENT LAW AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR INFORMATION SERVICES AND INFORMATION SCIENTISTS
Authors: OPPENHEIM CHARLES
Published: January 2008

Four major changes in patent law—the British Patents Act, European Patent Convention, Community Patent Convention and the Patent Co‐operation Treaty are described. Comments are made on their likely effect on information scientists and commercial information services and some predictions are made on likely usage of the European Patent Convention by British firms.
CLASSIFICATION IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: THE TWENTY YEARS FOLLOWING DORKING
Authors: COATES E.J.
Published: January 2008

My contact with Herbert Coblans was limited, alas, to our shared concerns in the field of subject indication. He first sought me out in the early 1960s, ostensibly to find out about the indexing methodology of British Technology Index, then with its birth agonies not too far behind it, but more probably to give moral support. From such a quarter this meant a great deal. I had, for some reason, expected to find him a mechanizing man, to whom I would be required to hand over copious rudimentary enlightenment on subject indication questions, but this was quite wrong. It was I who soon found myself on the receiving end of the enlightenment process.
INTERNATIONAL CO‐OPERATION IN INFORMATION TRANSFER
Authors: WYSOCKI A.
Published: January 2008

Information transfer, which means the collection, storage, processing and dissemination of information is now a major resource of strategic national and international importance, without which the socio‐economic development of nations cannot be properly achieved.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONALLY MANAGED INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND THEIR PROSPECTS
Authors: EAST H.
Published: January 2008

This paperreviews a selection of international collaborative efforts in the production of information services and attempts to characterize modes of co‐operation. It is argued that economic and political considerations, as much as improved technology of information transfer, will determine the nature of collaboration in future as they have in the past.
MATHEMATICS AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: SALTON GERARD
Published: January 2008

The development of a given discipline in science and technology often depends on the availability of theories capable of describing the processes which control the field and of modelling the interactions between these processes. The absence of an accepted theory of information retrieval has been blamed for the relative disorder and the lack of technical advances in the area. The main mathematical approaches to information retrieval are examined in this study, including both algebraic and probabilistic models, and the difficulties which impede the formalization of information retrieval processes are described. A number of developments are covered where new theoretical understandings have directly led to the improvement of retrieval techniques and operations.
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
Authors: ATKINSON MALCOLM P.
Published: January 2008

A survey of current work on database systems is presented. The area is divided into three main sectors: data models, data languages and support for database operations. Data models are presented as the link between the database and the real world. Languages range from formal algebraic languages to attempts to use a dialogue in English to formulate queries. The support includes hardware for content addressing, database machines and software techniques for optimizing and evaluating group expressions. Mathematical models are used to organize this support. Throughout there is a tutorial component and evaluation, which in both cases is related to the application of database ideas to documentation.
INFORMATION NEEDS IN LOCAL AUTHORITY SOCIAL SERVICES DEPARTMENTS: A SECOND REPORT ON PROJECT INISS
Authors: WILSON T.D. , STREATFIELD D.R. , MULLINGS C.
Published: January 2008

This paper describes the second phase of Project INISS which involved structured interviews with 151 members of staff of four social services departments. The planning, design and execution of the interviews are described and results are analysed under three headings: the context of information needs, organization communication, and information need/information‐seeking behaviour. The implications of the work for the information profession are explored.
THE AGING OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE: A CITATION ANALYSIS
Authors: GRIFFITH BELVER C. , SERVI PATRICIA N. , ANKER ANITA L. , CARL DROTT M.
Published: January 2008

Scientific writings age; individual documents, issues or volumes of scientific journals are, eventually, less valued and less used with the passage of time. Long periods of time, say more than several decades, render portions of the literature obsolete, and ‘aging’ is evident. However, controversy has developed recently about quantitative models, particularly Brookes, which proposes a systematic exponential aging process for the corpus of library periodical holdings. In disagreement with these models, Sandison presents use patterns showing no aging; and Line points to methodological difficulties in demonstrating aging. Both the models, and the questions raised regarding their validity are of considerable interest and importance to our understanding of the nature of scientific information and the management of collections. We show, here, that citation data conform well to the Brookes model, but the chief findings regard the nature of the aging process and its apparent range within scientific literatures. A scientific journal which is used as an archive ages slowly; one which supports a research front ages quickly. Aging depends not merely on the material itself, but its user, and a single journal may be aged very differently by different user communities. Lastly, aging rates vary among journals, and it is relatively easy to identify journals which age at about the rate at which the literature grows and journals which appear to exhaust most of their utility within a few years.
DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL EXPERIMENTS USING INDEXING VOCABULARIES OF VARYING SIZE. I. VARIETY GENERATION SYMBOLS ASSIGNED TO THE FRONTS OF INDEX TERMS
Authors: BURNETT JOHN E. , COOPER DAVID , LYNCH MICHAEL F. , WILLETT PETER , WYCHERLEY MAUREEN
Published: January 2008

A study has been made of the effect of controlled variations in indexing vocabulary size on retrieval performance using the Cranfield 200 and 1400 test collections. The vocabularies considered are sets of variable‐length character strings chosen from the fronts of document and query terms so as to occur with approximate equifrequency. Sets containing between 120 and 720 members were tested both using an application of the Cluster Hypothesis and in a series of linear associative retrieval experiments. The effectiveness of the smaller sets is low but the larger ones exhibit retrieval characteristics comparable to those of words.
USING PROBABILISTIC MODELS OF DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL WITHOUT RELEVANCE INFORMATION
Authors: CROFT W.B. , HARPER D.J.
Published: January 2008

Most probabilistic retrieval models incorporate information about the occurrence of index terms in relevant and non‐relevant documents. In this paper we consider the situation where no relevance information is available, that is, at the start of the search. Based on a probabilistic model, strategies are proposed for the initial search and an intermediate search. Retrieval experiments with the Cranfield collection of 1,400 documents show that this initial search strategy is better than conventional search strategies both in terms of retrieval effectiveness and in terms of the number of queries that retrieve relevant documents. The intermediate search is shown to be a useful substitute for a relevance feedback search. Experiments with queries that do not retrieve relevant documents at high rank positions indicate that a cluster search would be an effective alternative strategy.