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Our work addresses a well documented problem: users are frequently unable to articulate a query that clearly and comprehensively expresses their information need. This can be attributed to the information need being too ambiguous and not clearly defined in the user’s mind, to a lack of knowledge of the domain of interest on the part of the user, to a lack of understanding of a retrieval system’s conceptual model, or to an inability to use a certain query syntax. This thesis proposes a software tool that emulates the human search mediator. It helps a user explore a domain of interest, learn its structure, terminology and key concepts, and clarify and refine an information need. It can also help a user generate high-quality queries for searching the World Wide Web or other such large and heterogeneous document collections. Our work was inspired by library studies which have highlighted the role of the librarian in helping the user explore her information need, define the problem to be solved, articulate a formulation of the information need and adapt it for the retrieval system at hand in order to get information. Our approach, mediated access through a clustered collection, is based on an

There have been ample suggestions in the literature that terms added to documents from Flickr and Wikipedia can complement traditional methods of indexing and controlled vocabularies. At the same time, adding new metadata to existing metadata objects may not always add value to those objects. This research examines the potential added value of using user-contributed (“social”) terms from Flickr and the English Wikipedia in image indexing compared with using two expert-created controlled vocabularies— the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials and the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Our experiments confirmed that the social terms did provide added value relative to terms from the controlled vocabularies. The median rating for the usefulness of social terms was significantly higher than the baseline rating but was lower than the ratings for the terms from the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials and the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Furthermore, complementing the controlled vocabulary terms with social terms more than doubled the average coverage of participants’ terms for a photograph. The study also investigated the relationships between user demographics and users ’ perceptions of the value of terms, as well as the relationships between user demographics and indexing quality, as measured by the number of terms participants assigned to a photograph. It was found that the participants with more tagging and indexing experience assigned a greater number of tags than did the other participants.

We present our early explorations into developing a data mining based approach for enhancing the quality of textbooks. We describe a diagnostic tool to algorithmically identify deficient sections in textbooks. We also discuss techniques for algorithmically augmenting textbook sections with links to selective content mined from the Web. Our evaluation, employing widely-used textbooks from India, indicates that developing technological approaches to help improve textbooks holds promise. 1.

The field of subject analysis enjoyed a flurry of interest in the 1970s, and has recently become a focus of attention again. The scholarly community doing work in this area has become more diffuse, and has grown to include new groups, such as information architects. Changes in information services and information seeking have led to reexamination of the nature and role of subject analysis tools and practices. This selective review looks at thesauri, guided navigation, and folksonomy as three activity areas in which subject analysis researchers have been attempting to address rapidly changing new environments.

This study describes an information retrieval experiment comparing the retrieval effectiveness (recall and precision) for queries run against professionally and automatically generated metadata records. The metadata records represented web pages from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The results of 10 queries were analyzed in terms of recall and precision for this small-scale study. The results of the study suggest that professionally generated metadata records are not significantly better in terms of information retrieval effectiveness than automatically generated metadata records.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm JDOC

Interoperability in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) is a full-grown subject and an objective with many shortcomings as far as definition of standards for geographic data transfer and exchange, different data types ’ integration, and comprehensive semantic models is concerned. There is a vast literature available on interoperability models containing different interoperability levels, including technological, syntactic and semantic levels. However, very limited research has been carried out on the development of interoperability models for the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). This paper provides a short review of the main advances in interoperability related to SDI. It also discusses the important role of metadata elements in the formalization of interoperability models for the implementation of SDI. We propose an integrated interoperability model based on the definition of a common template that integrates seven interoperability levels: technical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, dynamic, conceptual and organizational. The implementation is carried out by automatic production of ISO19115 metadata. Finally, the results outline the strength and deficiencies in terms of the dynamic interoperability level of SDI based on the elements of ISO19115 metadata.

Places the teaching of (about) indexing into the context of the 20 fundamental attributes of all information retrieval databases or systems, ranging from back-of-the-book indexes to physical and digital libraries, indexing and abstracting services, and online or web-based message/document retrieval services. I do not believe that indexing can be taught. Rules, and the reasons for following or not following them, can be presented. Various index formats can be discussed. However, the ability to objectively and accurately analyze text and to produce a conceptual map that directs readers to specific portions of the text involves a way of thinking that can only be guided and encouraged, not taught.... Indexing cannot be reduced to a set of steps that can be followed. (Nancy Mulvany, Indexing Books, 1994, pp. vii–viii)

Global changes in physical infrastructure, population, technological development, and climate have contributed to an information explosion. This is a major challenge to information managers, who are faced, not only with the challenge of selecting, acquiring, and storing the information, with the perennial problem of how to make it available to potential users quickly and easily.