A hierarchical extension to the American National Standard for Bibliographic Information Interchange on Magnetic Tape is defined and described. The accommodation of the extension within the existing standard is discussed, modifications to the existing standard are proposed, and applications of the hierarchical format are presented. (21 references)…

Discusses the current status and future expectations of scientific and technical numeric databases. A bibliography provides resources for background readings, directories or listings of compilations, and subject specific discussions. Numeric database addresses and a summary of available databases are also provided. (CLB)

Eight articles describe the development, content, and structure of databases outside of the United States. Features discussed include library involvement, authority control, shared cataloging services, union catalogs, thesauri, abstracts, and distribution methods. Countries and areas represented are Latin America, Australia, the United Kingdom,…

Examines the practice and implications of issuing corrections, retractions, and amplifications in online databases. All database producers do not provide mechanisms to accommodate retractions and corrections, and it can be difficult for a searcher to find evidence of error correction. Sidebars illustrate both the lack of and evidence of…

Outlines some of the major considerations in developing an image database system with an emphasis on continuous tone images and network-accessible multiuser databases. Topics include: definition/description of a digital image; matching technology to use; documentation/standards; access; image quality; software systems; scanners; and sources of…

Outlines the file structure requirements for a microcomputer-based information retrieval system using FoxPro, a relational database management system (DBMS). Issues relating to the design and implementation of such systems are discussed, and two possible designs are examined in terms of space economy and practicality of implementation. (15…

The "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior" was founded in 1958 by a group of male psychologists, mainly from the northeastern USA and connected with either Harvard or Columbia. Fifty years later about 20% of both editors and authors reside outside this country and almost the same proportion is women. Other changes in the…

This chapter describes the development of a state-level student tracking system that enables the state and institutions to follow various cohort types of students across institutional boundaries. The system was developed by the Policy Research and Data Warehousing section of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). SCHEV is the…

Considers flexible querying of relational databases. Highlights include SQL languages and basic aggregate operators; Sugeno's fuzzy integral; evaluation examples; and how and under what conditions other aggregate functions could be applied to fuzzy sets in a flexible query. (Author/LRW)

Discusses compression of databases that reduces space requirements and retrieval times; considers compression of documents in text databases based on semistatic modeling with words; and proposes a scheme for general purpose compression that can be applied to all types of data stored in large collections. (Author/LRW)

Discusses the use of natural language processing to help organize multimedia data. The MARIE system, which uses captions to embody the classificatory information and heuristic advice necessary to search a database of photographs, is explained. Advantages include improved speed of access and the ability for improved user interaction. (Contains 21…

Presents two groups of text encoding problems encountered by the Brown University Women Writers Project while using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to create a database of book transcriptions: dual emendation and correction, and multiple hierarchies. Offers several possible approaches to these encoding problems and analyzes the issues…

Businesses and higher education leaders are looking for students with the ability to evaluate and analyze information and to use this information to solve real-world problems. These are the information literacy skills students need for the 21st century. However, several recent studies on the ability of college freshmen to handle the rigor of…

The current economic crisis has naturally reached into one's pocket and made many people anxious about their own finances. As consumers ride out these treacherous times, where can they go to find advice on managing and paying down their debt, protecting their investments, incomes, and retirement plans, and applying for mortgages in a tight credit…

The potential that exists for expanding services and automating routine procedures via the microcomputer has been greatly increased by the advances in database managers. A database manager is described as a collection of programs that perform many data manipulation functions that would have required elaborate programming work in the past. (MLW)