BRIAN VICKERY and ALINA VICKERY
There is a huge amount of information and data stored in publicly available online databases that consist of large text files accessed by Boolean search techniques. It is widely…
Abstract
There is a huge amount of information and data stored in publicly available online databases that consist of large text files accessed by Boolean search techniques. It is widely held that less use is made of these databases than could or should be the case, and that one reason for this is that potential users find it difficult to identify which databases to search, to use the various command languages of the hosts and to construct the Boolean search statements required. This reasoning has stimulated a considerable amount of exploration and development work on the construction of search interfaces, to aid the inexperienced user to gain effective access to these databases. The aim of our paper is to review aspects of the design of such interfaces: to indicate the requirements that must be met if maximum aid is to be offered to the inexperienced searcher; to spell out the knowledge that must be incorporated in an interface if such aid is to be given; to describe some of the solutions that have been implemented in experimental and operational interfaces; and to discuss some of the problems encountered. The paper closes with an extensive bibliography of references relevant to online search aids, going well beyond the items explicitly mentioned in the text. An index to software appears after the bibliography at the end of the paper.
This review reports on the current state and the potential of tools and systems designed to aid online searching, referred to here as online searching aids. Intermediary…
Abstract
This review reports on the current state and the potential of tools and systems designed to aid online searching, referred to here as online searching aids. Intermediary mechanisms are examined in terms of the two stage model, i.e. end‐user, intermediary, ‘raw database’, and different forms of user — system interaction are discussed. The evolution of the terminology of online searching aids is presented with special emphasis on the expert/non‐expert division. Terms defined include gateways, front‐end systems, intermediary systems and post‐processing. The alternative configurations that such systems can have and the approaches to the design of the user interface are discussed. The review then analyses the functions of online searching aids, i.e. logon procedures, access to hosts, help features, search formulation, query reformulation, database selection, uploading, downloading and post‐processing. Costs are then briefly examined. The review concludes by looking at future trends following recent developments in computer science and elsewhere. Distributed expert based information systems (debis), the standard generalised mark‐up language (SGML), the client‐server model, object‐orientation and parallel processing are expected to influence, if they have not done so already, the design and implementation of future online searching aids.
This paper describes some tools that were written to help with the conversion of the card catalogue of a collection of cartoon drawings into an online catalogue. The tools…
Abstract
This paper describes some tools that were written to help with the conversion of the card catalogue of a collection of cartoon drawings into an online catalogue. The tools described are an input program and a pair of special purpose editors that are used for checking and correcting the newly input catalogue records. The first of the editors is screen based but the second editor runs on a Sun workstation and has a user interface that uses the workstation's mouse and graphics. Also described is a graphical authority file editor that is integrated with the workstation editor.
This paper describes how the University of Kent Cartoon Centre catalogue was made accessible on the World Wide Web and analyses the effectiveness of the search site during the…
Abstract
This paper describes how the University of Kent Cartoon Centre catalogue was made accessible on the World Wide Web and analyses the effectiveness of the search site during the four years it has been online. The Cartoon Centre catalogue covers a wide range of British newspaper cartoon drawings and is unusual in being a substantial (over 90,000 records) online catalogue that also includes digital images of all the catalogued material. The paper describes some of the decisions that were made in putting the catalogue on the Web and then uses the evidence of the Web server logs to draw some conclusions about how successful the Web interface has been and how it might be improved in the future.
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J.D. BOVEY and P.J. BROWN
Computers with graphics screens and pointing devices such as the ‘mouse’ provide the opportunity for highly interactive user interfaces. This paper describes some novel software…
Abstract
Computers with graphics screens and pointing devices such as the ‘mouse’ provide the opportunity for highly interactive user interfaces. This paper describes some novel software for displaying documents on graphics screens: the software provides a fast and simple way for users to peruse documents and to examine the parts that interest them. One application of the software is as a front end to a document retrieval system, since it provides a way for users to identify quickly the records that are of relevance to them and to provide feedback between the user and the underlying retrieval system.
A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design is outlined based on the derivation of a behavioural model of the information seeking patterns of academic social…
Abstract
A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design is outlined based on the derivation of a behavioural model of the information seeking patterns of academic social scientists. The information seeking patterns of a variety of academic social scientists were broken down into six characteristics: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. These characteristics constitute the principal generic features of the different individual patterns, and together provide a flexible behavioural model for information retrieval system design. The extent to which these characteristics are available on existing systems is considered, and the requirements for implementing the features on an experimental system are set out.
Suliman Al‐Hawamdeh, Rachel de Vere, Geoff Smith and Peter Willett
Full‐text documents are usually searched by means of a Boolean retrieval algorithm that requires the user to specify the logical relationships between the terms of a query. In…
Abstract
Full‐text documents are usually searched by means of a Boolean retrieval algorithm that requires the user to specify the logical relationships between the terms of a query. In this paper, we summarise the results to date of a continuing programme of research at the University of Sheffield to investigate the use of nearest‐neighbour retrieval algorithms for full‐text searching. Given a natural‐language query statement, our methods result in a ranking of the paragraphs comprising a full‐text document in order of decreasing similarity with the query, where the similarity for each paragraph is determined by the number of keyword stems that it has in common with the query. A full‐text document test collection has been created to allow systematic tests of retrieval effectiveness to be carried out. Experiments with this collection demonstrate that nearest‐neighbour searching provides a means for paragraph‐based access to full‐text documents that is of comparable effectiveness to both Boolean and hypertext searching and that index term weighting schemes which have been developed for the searching of bibliographical databases can also be used to improve the effectiveness of retrieval from full‐text databases. A current project is investigating the extent to which a paragraph‐based full‐text retrieval system can be used to augment the explication facilities of an expert system on welding.
A Bayesian argument is used to suggest modifications to the Robertson/Sparck Jones relevance weighting formula, to accommodate the addition to the query of terms taken from the…
Abstract
A Bayesian argument is used to suggest modifications to the Robertson/Sparck Jones relevance weighting formula, to accommodate the addition to the query of terms taken from the relevant documents identified during the search.
MARK STEWART and PETER WILLETT
This paper describes the simulation of a nearest neighbour searching algorithm for document retrieval using a pool of microprocessors. The documents in a database are organised in…
Abstract
This paper describes the simulation of a nearest neighbour searching algorithm for document retrieval using a pool of microprocessors. The documents in a database are organised in a multi‐dimensional binary search tree, and the algorithm identifies the nearest neighbour for a query by a backtracking search of this tree. Three techniques are described which allow parallel searching of the tree. A PASCAL‐based, general purpose simulation system is used to simulate these techniques, using a pool of Transputer‐like microprocessors with three standard document test collections. The degree of speed‐up and processor utilisation obtained is shown to be strongly dependent upon the characteristics of the documents and queries used. The results support the use of pooled microprocessor systems for searching applications in information retrieval.