Describes the six tasks required in the development of an online database: analysis, design, programing, testing, loading, and documentation. Figures illustrate file formats, and a bibliography lists five sources. (FM)

Proposes a microprocessor-based architecture that makes large use of parallelism both in processing and in retrieval operations. The proposed system consists of three functional blocks: the query processor, simple query executers, and the answer composer. Twenty-one references are listed. (FM)

Highlights the importance of conceptual and theoretical work in designing information retrieval systems. Examines two epistemological positions leading to different solutions in digital library design: the information transfer perspective and the social constructionist knowledge production perspective. Suggests that noun-based approaches can be…

Describes significant attributes of expert systems, contrasts them to conventional computer systems, and provides an overview of the R1 expert system used by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to put together operational systems that meet customers' requirements. Document handling, particularly pictures and images in documents, is also briefly…

Proposes a summarization system for multiple documents that employs named entities and other signatures to cluster news from different sources, as well as punctuation marks, linking elements, and topic chains to identify the meaningful units (MUs). Using nouns and verbs to identify similar MUs, focusing and browsing models are applied to represent…

This introduction presents a framework for discussing hypertext, previews individual articles, and discusses some relations of hypertext to library science. Historical notes are also provided, as well as biographical information on the authors of individual articles in this special section. (16 references) (CLB)

Discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and considers four potential roles for AI in information retrieval (IR): (1) information characterization, i.e., building a knowledge base; (2) information seeking, i.e., search formulation; (3) support functions, including abstracting; and (4) systems integration. Three examples are given that show how AI…

Discusses the integration of knowledge management into business applications. Topics include the difference between knowledge and information; performance-centered design (PCD); applying knowledge to support business outcomes, including context, experience, and information quality; techniques for merging PCD and knowledge management, including…

Presents an operational definition of personal information retrieval systems and describes design principles of current applications and existing systems, current trends, and research guidelines for general design principles. (4 references) (Author/CLB)

Describes digital community information systems (CIS) and the need for improvements in system design. Proposes a layered evaluation framework to guide the evaluation of digital CIS from the perspective of information retrieval, following a selective review of digital CIS and evaluation approaches. Contains 59 references. (Author/LRW)

Describes the architecture and functioning of a system developed specifically for text processing applications--such as information retrieval--that can benefit from structural comparisons between elements of text, such as queries and abstracts. The general ways in which the system performs matches and the ways in which this objective influenced…

Describes SCISOR (System for Conceptual Information Summarization, Organization and Retrieval), a prototype intelligent information retrieval system that extracts useful information from large bodies of text. It overcomes limitations of linguistic coverage by applying a text processing strategy that is tolerant of unknown words and gaps in…

Describes several problems encountered when using the Boolean model of information retrieval, and for each problem offers a nontraditional design principle that overcomes the difficulty. The problems discussed are the unfriendliness of Boolean formulas, null output and output overload, undifferentiated facets, interpreting weights, and term…

Presents a model that places Boolean database queries into conjunctive normal form, thereby allowing probabilistic ranking of documents and the incorporation of relevance feedback. Experimental results compare the performance of a sequential learning probabilistic retrieval model with the proposed integrated Boolean probabilistic model and a fuzzy…

Discusses the multilevel information system (MLIS), a retrieval system that integrates functions typical for database management systems and retrieval-oriented systems and provides several levels of data accessing, each developed for a different class of users. Twenty-two sources are cited. (FM)