Discusses the use of telecommunications in museums; reviews existing museum documentary databases, including those that are accessible from remote locations; describes the RAMA (Remote Access to Museum Archive) project, a computer network linking image documentary databases of seven European museums; and discusses the outlook for electronic…

Presents the list-structure data model for dealing with sets of objects, which has ordering as its fundamental principle. An extended notion of patterns and several operators of the algebra are presented. Design issues that influenced the development of the language are described. (Contains 30 references.) (KRN)

Describes textual database queries in the humanities based on poststructuralist theories and experiences with the ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) database. The use of computers for literary research and text interpretation and analysis is considered. (Contains nine references.) (LRW)

Discussion of the failure of individual keywords to identify conceptual content of documents in retrieval systems highlights Metric Similarity Modeling, a method for creating vector space representation of documents based on modeling target interdocument similarity values. Semantic relatedness, latent semantic indexing, an indexing and retrieval…

Describes a system for organizing a classroom library which uses a computer database and student librarians. (SR)

This progress report presents findings from a failure analysis of two full-text computer-assisted legal research systems, Lexis and Westlaw. Linguistic analyses of unretrieved documents and false drops are discussed, and examples of natural language phenomena that affect Boolean retrieval system performance are examined. (Author/LRW)

Discusses online database searching and electronic information sources in Australia. Highlights include CD-ROM technology, the Internet, searching software, and content. A sidebar provides a list of 28 Australian and New Zealand electronic information sources. (AEF)

Explains the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) protocol as a set of rules for passing information from a Web server to an external program such as a database search engine. Topics include advantages over traditional client/server solutions, limitations, sample library applications, and sources of information from the Internet. (LRW)

Presents an access method for temporal data called the Snapshot Index that reconstructs a past state of a time-evolving collection of objects. Previous approaches to temporal access methods are reviewed, and migrating data to write-once optical disks are discussed. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of local area networks and multiple file servers for concurrent information retrievals provides a rationale for workload and data allocation and presents an analytical model which will attain effective allocation policies. Nonlinear integer programming is discussed, and computational results show the effectiveness of the heuristic.…

Discusses licensing agreements and royalties to writers for the sale of articles from online databases. CARL Corporation is working with the National Writers' Union to devise a transaction-based method of paying royalty fees to authors whose articles are used through UnCover; this agreement could provide a model for use by all database services.…

Describes a study of Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings that examined 1,000 records from the LC BOOKSM database (i.e., bibliographic records of monographs cataloged by LC) to determine current subject cataloging practices at LC. The process of constructing subject headings with free-floating subdivisions is discussed, and recommendations…

Traces the development of "The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms" from its roots as a term list through six editions to a sophisticated searching and indexing tool, and describes the process for determining controlled vocabulary and forms of display. Features designed especially to assist novice users and nonpsychologists are also…

Describes a study of the current state of computer networks in the countries of the former Soviet Union (X-USSR). Four wide area networks are described; network uses and services are examined; social effects of computer networks are considered; and the development of the computer and telecommunications industry in X-USSR countries is discussed.…

Provides background on the organization and legislative process of the European Community (EC) and highlights the documents that form the cornerstones of the EC 1992 program to establish a unified economy. Materials described include reports, legislation, newsletters, periodicals, statistics, catalogs, and databases. (18 references) (MES)