Analyzes relevance assessments of topical descriptors for bibliographic records for two dimensions: (1) a vertical conceptual hierarchy of broad to narrow descriptors, and (2) a horizontal linkage of related terms. The data were analyzed for a semantic distance and semantic direction effect as postulated by the Semantic Distance Model. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of natural language processing focuses on a multi-strategic integrated text preprocessing method for difficult problems of sentence boundary disambiguation and word boundary disambiguation of Web texts. Describes an evaluation of the method using Korean Web document collections. (Author/LRW)

Describes a study that computed the low performance standards for queries in 17 test collections. Predicted by the hypergeometric distribution, the standards represent the highest level of retrieval effectiveness attributable to chance. Operational levels of performance for vector-space and other retrieval models were compared to the standards.…

Discussion of evaluation methodology in information retrieval focuses on the average precision over a set of fixed recall values in an effort to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of a search algorithm. Highlights include a review of traditional evaluation methodology with examples; and a statistical inference methodology called bootstrap.…

Discussion of data storage technology for multimedia materials highlights a new signature file method that divides files into variable-sized vertical frames to optimize response time using partial query evaluation. Real data experiments that tested the response time are reported, and future work is discussed. (Author/LRW)

Describes an investigation that was conducted to show the feasibility of spectral methods in information science, particularly for analyzing academic library circulation data. Signal analysis methods were used to detect periodicity, and spectral methods show promise for analyzing time series and other signals in information science. (Author/LRW)

Discusses cross-language, multilingual, and bilingual information retrieval on the Web; evaluates retrieval effectiveness of indexing and search strategies based on test collections from CLEF (Cross-Language Evaluation Forum) in English, French, German, and Italian; and suggests and evaluates database merging strategies. Appendices include…