Ranking of retrieved documents in the descending order of their association with the inquiry has been known in theory for a very long time, but so far it has found only limited…
Abstract
Ranking of retrieved documents in the descending order of their association with the inquiry has been known in theory for a very long time, but so far it has found only limited use in operational online systems, Because of the ranking, the documents that are probably relevant are concentrated at the top of the set of documents retrieved and submitted for display. This affects the practical strategy of online retrieval that differs essentially from the search strategy in the traditional Boolean‐oriented systems: the inquirer does not need to reformulate his inquiry if it yields too many documents nor to be too anxious at the selection of inquiry terms. Consequently, types of inquiry can be used that are inadmissible in Boolean‐oriented systems or in systems that rank only a limited number of documents.
DAVID MENHENNET and JANE WAINWRIGHT
The Library provides information, documentation and research services to Members of the House of Commons. The organization of the Library and the history of POLIS (the…
Abstract
The Library provides information, documentation and research services to Members of the House of Commons. The organization of the Library and the history of POLIS (the Parliamentary On‐Line Information System) are described. The system became operational in 1980, and was set up by and is operated by Scicon Computer Services Ltd. Data entry is performed by the Library's Indexing Unit. Details of the telecommunications, software, hardware and database are given. UNIDAS retrieval software is used, and subject indexing is based on a thesaurus compiled by the Library. Most Library staff are being trained to use the retrieval facilities. Other offices of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords also have terminals linked to the system. Approved non‐Parliamentary users may also subscribe to POLIS via the public‐switched telephone network, Euronet or PSS. Other uses of computers by the Library are described.
The aim of this short paper is to draw attention to the growing importance of online retrieval of non‐bibliographic information, and to summarize the salient features of what are…
Abstract
The aim of this short paper is to draw attention to the growing importance of online retrieval of non‐bibliographic information, and to summarize the salient features of what are commonly referred to as databanks.
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.
Information is the most valuable but least valued tool the scientist/engineer has. The computer program developments based on the finite element and boundary element techniques is…
Abstract
Information is the most valuable but least valued tool the scientist/engineer has. The computer program developments based on the finite element and boundary element techniques is now receiving considerable attention of the engineering community. The same is valid for their satellite programs such as pre‐ and post‐processors. Recently also expert systems are being developed in the field of structural mechanics. There are thousands of different programs in use and new ones are continuously being developed. Output of related literature on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) technology has grown at a prodigious rate in the last two decades. An effective retrieval of information is necessary, but this is impossible without computer assistance. MAKEBASE is a special purpose, menu‐driven database which stores all types of information listed above. The development of this database was started five years ago. Today, MAKEBASE contains information about 1600 different FE/BE programs and more than 30,000 literature references. It is updated on a daily basis. MAKEBASE is implemented on VAX 11/780 (VMS), Apollo workstations, and different subjects of literature references have also been transferred into the microcomputer environment for individual PC databases. This paper describes the latest version of MAKEBASE and outlines the philosophy for the use of individual, special‐tailored micro‐databases for PCs.
Christine Pogue and Peter Willett
The ICL Distributed Array Processor, or DAP, is a single instruction stream, multiple data stream computer in which instructions are broadcast for simultaneous execution in each…
Abstract
The ICL Distributed Array Processor, or DAP, is a single instruction stream, multiple data stream computer in which instructions are broadcast for simultaneous execution in each of 4096 processing elements. Although originally developed for numeric computation, the DAP also provides a means for the rapid matching of the term lists representing documents and queries in information retrieval systems, and this paper presents an investigation of the use of the DAP for the parallel searching of large serial files of documents. Best match retrieval experiments with three collections of documents and queries show that the DAP is very much more efficient than a conventional mainframe computer in calculating a measure of similarity between a query and each of the documents in a large collection. It is suggested that the DAP, or machines with similar architectures, could form the basis for interactive bibliographic searching of serial files.
One of the tasks of the special librarian is to facilitate current awareness: services are set up to encourage user groups to keep up‐to‐date with developments in their own and…
Abstract
One of the tasks of the special librarian is to facilitate current awareness: services are set up to encourage user groups to keep up‐to‐date with developments in their own and related subject areas. The librarian advocates current awareness as an essential prerequisite for members of that user group to remain effective practitioners, researchers or teachers within their subject area. The librarian encourages and advocates because unfortunately some of those practitioners, researchers and teachers are either unconvinced of the need for current awareness or haven't the time/are not interested/cannot be bothered.
Martin Porter and Valerie Galpin
This paper reports on the successful introduction of a sophisticated online catalogue system at the library of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, using the Muscat…
Abstract
This paper reports on the successful introduction of a sophisticated online catalogue system at the library of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, using the Muscat program package. The system provides to both end‐users and library staff a choice between boolean searching on keywords and access using relevance feedback based on free text in English, mixed with UDC classification numbers. The system is implemented on an IBM 3084 computer. Significant benefits from the application of relevance feedback are reported with 10,000 records on file.
Stephen Wade, Peter Willett, Bruce Robinson, Brian Vickery and Alina Vickery
This paper reports on a comparative evaluation of two computerised reference retrieval systems, INSTRUCT and PLEXUS. Instruct is a statistically‐based system based on best match…
Abstract
This paper reports on a comparative evaluation of two computerised reference retrieval systems, INSTRUCT and PLEXUS. Instruct is a statistically‐based system based on best match searching and automatic index term weighting while Plexus uses expert systems techniques to improve access to a conventional Boolean search system. After an introduction to the retrieval techniques used by the two systems, their retrieval effectiveness is compared using a set of nineteen queries and 512 documents on the subject of gardening. The best results were obtained by using the terms suggested by the Plexus system as the basis for an Instruct search.