Describes design and presents examples of industrial use of small expert systems and guidelines for choosing problems which lend themselves to small tool solutions. Use of microcomputer facilitated decision tables to diagnose and categorize people, things, and issues is suggested, and development of three decision table formats is described. (MBR)

Discussion of potential library applications for microcomputers focuses on effective software and professional system design practices and describes OCLC projects involving microcomputers to illustrate their use as a stand-alone unit, back-up system, interface device, and an enhancement mechanism. Additional sources of information on microcomputer…

Details the characteristics of authority records in the machine readable Library of Congress Subject Headings. Statistics are given on occurrences of variable length fields and the length and maximum length of such fields in subject heading records. The usefulness of these statistics for system design is discussed. (five references) (CLB)

This paper reports on a transaction log analysis of 51,473 queries from 18,113 users of Excite, a major World Wide Web search engine. Approximately 2,500 of these queries were from the use of relevance feedback. Given the high level of research activity and historical success of relevance feedback in assisting users in locating relevant…

This study compared more than 3400 MMPIs obtained from pschiatric in-patients in public mental health facilities with mental status and preadmission descriptor ratings to derive empirical correlates of profiles clustered primarily by two-point high codes. (Author)

Describes an interface mechanism called "complex view support" to be used with a relational database system (RDBS) in supporting increasingly complex distributed environments in automated library systems. The interface system refers queries to multidimensional tables as well as to flat tables on RDBS and is shown to efficiently support…

Reports experiments with a term weighting model incorporating relevance information in which it is assumed that index terms are distributed dependently. It is argued that, if high recall searches are required, relevance feedback based on the modified dependence model may be superior to the Boolean search. (Author/VT)

Describes a study that measured the speed, error rates, and subjective evaluation of arrow jump keys, a jump mouse, number keys, and a touch screen in an interactive encyclopedia. The results of previous studies are discussed as well as the findings of this study. Improvements in selection devices are suggested. (41 references) (Author/CLB)

To assess educational needs in the Pacific region, Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) identified 9 general education areas to be examined through 47 survey items. These items were presented as a questionnaire to educators in the region served by PREL, which includes American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,…

Describes rough sets theory and discusses the advantages it offers for information retrieval, including the implicit inclusion of Boolean logic, term weighting, ranked retrieval output, and relevance feedback. Rough set formalism is compared to Boolean, vector, and fuzzy models of information retrieval and a small scale evaluation of rough sets is…

The purpose of this volume is to analyze the problems of school finance in Madagascar, including those that have arisen in the past decade and those anticipated in the present decade (through 1980). More generally, this book examines past and future connections between the economic and educational systems in Madagascar. The author examines the…

A design group needs to sift through confusion, come together, and converse as a team before it can be productive in design tasks. At the 1994 Fuschl Conversation on Systems Design, the metaphor of lighting a fire was used to symbolize this coming together; three tables examine the relationships between the metaphor and starting a design…

Describes the development of a bibliographic information system designed to assist architecture/engineering firms under contract to the Army Corps of Engineers in locating regulations or guidelines for the planning, design, or construction of army facilities. A sample search of the system is appended. (Author/CLB)

Reviews studies that have attempted to measure levels of community library service, and describes the testing of hypotheses related to the impact of public library system development in Wisconsin on community library services. Conclusions about public library service in Wisconsin and the research methodology used are stated. (16 references) (CLB)

To identify factors which affect the acceptance of innovation in school organizations, a career development product entitled Operation Guidance (OG) was the object of a case study. Five basic organizational characteristics were used to roughly quantify attributes of the organization of the six schools studied. The characteristics were:…