ORIGINS (Oklahoma Resources Integration General Information Network System) is electronic database used for strategic planning by community leaders, educators, businesses, and government agencies. Survey of 540 online users (150 responses) and focus group data indicated 78% overall level of satisfaction, 82.5% satisfaction with data quality, 95%…

Information technology poses a threat to confidentiality of medical records. The number of parties claiming a need to know is increasing, but unrestricted access can lead to improper disclosure. Making health records semipublic may affect when and how people choose to obtain medical services. (SK)

Investigates the role of information retrieval in the enhancement from database management to knowledge base management and considers the relationship between information retrieval and artificial intelligence. Highlights include unstructured databases; storage of internal forms of documents; an example with relational database operations; and…

Identifies pathways to electronic resources on distance education, including the databases of the International Centre for Distance Learning, ERIC, and OCLC First Search; course offerings; gopher sites; and news, organizations, and discussion groups. (SK)

This article presents summaries of 22 documents on preparation for regular classroom inclusion of students with disabilities, selected from the ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) and ECER (Exceptional Child Education Resources) databases. Guidelines for acquiring the documents and accessing the ERIC system through online services or…

Examines the Commission of the European Communities' draft directive on database copyright. Components of the directive are discussed, including a definition of a database, databases protected as literary works under copyright law, piracy protection, fair use, and licensing requirements; and problems with the directive are described. (four…

Provides critical analysis of Edwards (1992) presentation of a set of examples from the Child Language Data Exchange System as prototypes of bad transcription practice. The analysis argues that Edward's approach causes the development of an overly rigid set of principles that could stop progress in the analysis of spontaneous language samples.…

Discusses the electronic publishing activities of Meckler Publishing on the Internet, including a publications catalog, an electronic journal, and tables of contents databases. Broader issues of commercial network publishing are also addressed, including changes in the research process, changes in publishing, bibliographic control,…

Surveys 25 people who use databases at work to discover the ways in which social and organizational factors affect users' tasks and their acquisition of knowledge and skills. Finds that learning to use databases for complex tasks in work entails more than simply learning concepts and procedures for executing program functions. (PRA)

Describes the development of a thesaurus for indexing the databases of Engineering Information, Inc., that improved the former precoordinate indexing vocabulary with postcoordinate descriptors and an appropriate set of thesaurus relationships. Problems of incompatibility with old indexing are addressed, and the use of an outside consultant versus…

Analyzes postings from a database users' help bulletin board. Finds that technical instructions should concentrate on likely errors that users may commit and how they can overcome and learn from them; provide may procedural options at once; give minimal conceptual and much procedural information; and integrate troubleshooting with task procedures.…

Description of the History Computerization Project, which is being developed for the exchange of information between researchers, librarians, archivists, museum curators, preservation groups, and historical societies, focuses on workshops that teach the use of computer database management for historical cataloging and research. (LRW)

Describes a study that analyzed the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms used to index the literature of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Subject access to the AIDSLINE database developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is examined, and changes in subject headings that reflect the growth of the field are analyzed. (12…

The first of two articles discusses virtual reality (VR) and online databases; the second one reports on an interview with Thomas A. Furness III, who defines VR and explains work at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT). Sidebars contain a glossary of VR terms and a conversation with Toni Emerson, the HIT lab's librarian. (LRW)

Discussion of the use of computers in Slavonic studies in the Ukraine focuses on linguistics. Topics addressed include the Machine Fund of Russian, a Russian language database; the Machine Fund of Non-Russian Languages that includes each republic of the former Soviet Union; natural language processing; and comparing languages. (18 references) (LRW)