Search results

I am going to describe in general terms a research project which has been established to explore some of the problems of the use of the literature, particularly in the field of Biomedical Engineering. Work started on 13th September 1965 in the Division of Biomedical Engineering of the National Institute for Medical Research (Hampstead Laboratories). The project is scheduled to last for three years, and like most research, consists of a number of overlapping stages. We have reached the stage now of having acquired sufficient equipment and data to start trying out some of our ideas.

In visiting more than a hundred special libraries and information units in Britain (not to use their resources but to study their methods) I have often been concerned by the inadequacy of the private indexing systems in use, although there were many exceptions. The classifications were often crude, and/or outdated, and/or quite insufficiently detailed, and were seldom provided with good subject indexes. Alphabetical subject‐heading indexes are more difficult to assess on a brief visit, but these were seldom detailed enough, so that fifty or more documents could be indexed under one heading. Seldom was there a separate subject‐headings list, and often no recognition of the need of one. Guidance for the user was very often poor.

The most satisfying and interesting human learning game‐of‐life is probably a conversation where there is a common will among the participants to promote understanding of our world despite possibly large differences in knowledge and experience. Gordon Pask took conversational learning as more than a general metaphor for humanly significant learning. He identified the essential minimal characteristics of the entities and relationships involved and formalised all that into a recursive learning theory of very broad scope. Over the years, Pask and his various System Research associates validated conversation theory by embodying it in a number of (n‐) person‐machine systems (SAKI, CASTE, THOUGHTSTICKER, TDS, etc.), and by doing case studies with various kinds of learners and tutor‐learners learning and teaching through these interfaces. Reviews some interesting aspects of conversation theory, including both its remarkable insights and some limitations. Concludes that there are good reasons for expecting that the implications of Pask’s approach to educational cybernetics will continue to be explored for many years to come.

The search for an easily installed, practicable and inexpensive information retrieval system continues unabated. This is reflected in the Aslib Library almost daily by requests for advice on the feasibility of installing this or that system, or for information on what systems are available in Great Britain. Study of the following bibliography, which covers only a narrow selection of information retrieval systems, will reveal that much original thought has been producing concrete results in this country. In fact, one of the earliest references is to a paper given at the twenty‐second Aslib Conference in 1947 by W. E. Batten, in which he describes his development of an ‘aspect’ card system—more often referred to today as ‘Peek‐a‐boo’ or ‘feature’ cards. Mr C. W. Cleverdon's Cranfield project is also adding considerable knowledge on the use of various indexing methods, including Uniterm.

After the wealth of theory and principles that we have had this morning, I feel something like awe to think that I have been operating co‐ordinate indexing systems for about eighteen years without knowing anything about the basic theories.

The first point that I would like to make about the differences between a structured and unstructured vocabulary is that the question is very much related to vocabulary size and this has certainly in the past generated a good deal of controversy in Aslib co‐ordinate indexing circles. Mr Snel and Mr Boyd have been two of the leading advocates of a restricted vocabulary and they argue that this keeps both indexing and searching simple. They also argue that it allows for human intelligence to play a much bigger part in the search process by allowing the sifting of search output to be done by the inquirer and not the system. It is also assumed, probably correctly, that the bigger the vocabulary the more noise a system will produce. The reason that I believe that the question of structured vocabularies and vocabulary's size are related is simply that if one does employ structure, i.e. a classificatory element of some sort, then the practical result of this is a bigger vocabulary. May I interject with a quotation from Cyril Cleverdon, who, to my way of thinking, summed up the question of vocabulary size in a conference that the Co‐ordinate Indexing Group organized some considerable while ago: ‘Much of the disagreement has been due to the fact that speakers were arguing from different view points. If it was found that a particular system operated satisfactorily for a certain organization, then obviously there was no need to find fault with it. However, it was unjustifiable to make claim as speakers had done that the same system would necessarily operate satisfactorily in all other situations. There were obvious differences when one organization was more interested in having a good recall ratio and was relatively unconcerned about relevance, whilst another organization was more interested in having a good relevance ratio. Certain indexing devices were available which could bring about either of these situations but it was unlikely that any of the operating systems discussed would satisfactorily meet both requirements.’

Although many large systems have by‐passed the problem by employing ‘natural language’, compound words remain a difficulty in thesaurus construction. In the past, rules have been devised which attempted to approach the problem via syntax, but these were not altogether satisfactory. Instead, it is proposed that the major criteria for handling compound words should rest upon their orthography (i.e. physical form), lexicography (dictionary definition) and semantics, with special attention being given to the possible occurrence of homographs—words which differ in meaning, but share a common form. The suggestions contained in BS 5723, Guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri, are assessed in relation to these criteria. BS 5723 is criticized for failing to pay sufficient attention to the requirements of mechanized systems, and for its partial failure in not recording the divergent needs of pre‐and post‐coordinate systems.

IThis review has been sponsored by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information and the end product of the complete research will be a thesaurus of management terms. Parallel research in the business management area and also supported by OSTI is being conducted by David Dews, Librarian of the Manchester Business School, and K. D. C. Vernon, Librarian of the London Graduate School of Business Studies. As Mr Vernon is at present engaged in the construction of a faceted classification scheme for management, this investigation has concentrated on the possibility of utilizing faceted techniques to construct such a thesaurus.

Indexing documents can be a purely mechanical operation or a highly intelligent one. It can be nothing more than a matter of listing the words in the title of the document, or it can be a detailed intellectual analysis of its content. But however the work is done, it ends up in the same way: the document gets labelled with a set of words (D). When it comes to searching the index, we again have to make up a set of words (Q). Retrieval is the operation of matching question words against document words. In co‐ordinate indexing, a document is retrieved if its word labels D include the question words Q. If we alter the words used for documents or questions, we affect the efficiency of the system.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the domain of experiential learning by sharing the experiences of establishing and developing student managed investment fund (SMIF) at West Virginia University (WVU).

This paper discusses the structure and performance of the SMIF at WVU within the context of experiential learning literature in financial education.

The adopted structure and coordination of SMIF appears to be effective in bridging the gap between classroom and the professional world, while significantly enhancing student experiential learning opportunities, engagement and professional preparedness.

The paper presents experience of launching and operating a SMIF at WVU, which has recently joined the ranks of R1 research universities. While the importance of research productivity has been on the rise, the significance of strengthening student experiences has also been growing and maintaining the balanced approach can be challenging. Enrollment in WVUs undergraduate finance program grew 33 percent over the past three years. With growing enrollment and competitiveness of finance degree programs, experiential learning opportunities like WVU’s SMIF are an essential for an evolving curriculum.