Discusses the operations of the Government Printing Office's Office of Superintendent of Documents and suggests that changes are needed. The depository library program is discussed, government publications are described, the proliferation of publications and other information sources is considered, and issues relating to improvements are raised.…

Responses from 246 of 374 Pennsylvania farmers surveyed showed that (1) preferred sources of environmental issues information were consultation, demonstration, tours, and print; (2) water pollution and manure mismanagement were perceived as the most serious issues; and (3) they were uncertain about Pennsylvania Department of Environmental…

In a course titled Computerized Consumer Responses and Information Systems, Purdue University students operate a consumer hotline for their school. They must promote its existence, answer calls, develop reports, produce training manuals, and set parameters for the computer system. (SK)

Discusses the inaccuracies and distortions found within the Portland Baseline Essays, one of the most widespread Afrocentric teacher resource materials in use. Specific distortions examined are that ancient Egypt was a Black nation and that the achievements of ancient Greece had African origins. (GLR)

Useful reference material and a list of professional associations are provided for the institutional researcher interested in qualitative research. (MSE)

Discusses science databases accessible via the Internet. Topics addressed include tools for identifying databases; types of databases, including bibliographic, numeric, and full-text; and places to look for additional sources. A sidebar provides a sample of science resources on the Internet. (Contains eight references.) (LRW)

Describes the electronic bulletin board system (BBS) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that is accessible through the Internet. Highlights include how to gain access; the menu-driven software; other electronic sources of FDA information; and adding value. Examples of the FDA BBS menu and the help screen are included. (LRW)

A telephone survey of 200 farm operators regarding adoption of innovations found 52% were early adopters or early majority adopters and 48% were late majority adopters or laggard. Importance of scientific research, learning about new concepts, and use of sources other than extension were factors distinguishing the categories. (SK)

A theoretically based structure-mapping model of writing from sources was proposed and tested with 34 male and 50 female undergraduates who wrote a comparison-contrast essay about 2 passages. Results suggest that the model, adapted from work of D. Gentner, is useful in describing use of sources in writing. (SLD)

Considers a "hybrid" approach to the modeling of uncertainty in deductive databases. The model, deductive IST (DIST) is based on an extension of the "Information Source Tracking" (IST) model for relational databases. Proves that the complexity of testing containment of conjunctive DIST queries remains the same as in the…

Iowa nurses in long-term and home-health-care settings (n=53) were interested in continuing-education programs and teleconferences on the following Alzheimer's disease topics: challenging behaviors, family needs, case management, long-term care services, and new developments. Teleconferences were a viable strategy for isolated rural nurses. (SK)

Reviews Web-search tools available to librarians. Discusses the Clever project, (part of the Computer Science Principles and Methodologies Department at the IBM Almaden Research Center, Silicon Valley, California), an algorithm that finds authoritative sources on the Web; Google technology, based on links between Web pages; Ask Jeeves, a…

Contributes to scholarship on agenda setting and news reporting of international-trade issues. Uses content analysis to show that the auto elite set the agenda for the "New York Times" and the "Detroit News." Shows that the "Detroit News" was more likely than the "New York Times" to be more biased,…

Finds computer-mediated environments pose a special challenge to legal and cultural protections and that these environments are unprecedented in the way commercially valuable information can be generated in their very use. Contends current discussions about privacy in computer-mediated environments have overlooked the potential of common law and…

Discusses how imprecision and uncertainty are dealt with in the UFO (Uncertainty and Fuzziness in an Object-oriented) database model. Such information is expressed by means of possibility distributions, and modeled by means of the proposed concept of "role objects." The role objects model uncertain, tentative information about objects,…