Discusses the growing competition among commercial portal Web sites which list online courses available through various colleges, universities, and other institutions, noting that institutions may pay a flat fee to be listed or pay a commission for each individual who enrolls. Considers some hidden costs for institutions, the business strategies…

Compares three Web-based online reference services that are described as a cross between a traditional database service and a Web search engine: Ask Jeeves (http://www.ask.com), The Electric Library (http://www.elibrary.com), and Information Please (http://www.infoplease.com). Concludes that each has strengths and weaknesses and aren't directly…

A centralized relational database is used to manage information on advanced practice nursing students and their preceptors at Johns Hopkins University. The system relieves faculty of time-consuming tasks and enables rapid report generation, consistent tracking, and timely communications. (SK)

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,…

Assesses the reliability of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data in terms of attrition patterns, characteristics of attriters and returners, and comparability with the Current Population Survey (CPS). Explores how attrition might corrupt the picture of labor-market experience and attempts to reconcile discrepancies between the CPS…

Examines issues of knowledge management within academic libraries and how reference librarians can become more effective as information intermediaries. Describes the common knowledge database (CKDB) developed at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus to more fully integrate libraries on campus and to facilitate the use and management of…

Survey results from 183 middle and high schools in Tennessee and 20 business education coordinators were used to build a profile of business education programs in the state. The data prototype can be used by state departments of education to determine the status of business education programs. (Author/JOW)

Describes and illustrates a distributed approach to usability (envisioning usability across the genres, practices, uses, and goals of a given activity) using a four-decade examination of a traffic accident location and analysis system. Uses the theoretical framework of "genre ecologies" to show how communities of users interact with…

Evaluates the retrieval performance of an algorithm that automatically categorizes medical documents, which consists in assigning an International Code of Disease (ICD) based on well-known information retrieval techniques. Reports on experimental results that tested precision using a database of over 20,000 medical documents. (Author/LRW)

Provides an overview of robots that retrieve World Wide Web documents and index data and then store it in a database. Nine robot-generated databases are described, including record content, services, search features, and sample search results; and sidebars discuss the controversy about Web robots and other resource discovery tools. (LRW)

Addresses the recognition of differences between clinical and research data in using computerized clinical nursing databases and the issues of privacy and confidentiality for patients whose records are involved. Describes procedures for assessing the quality and usability of these data for nursing research. (SK)

Suggests strategies for computer-assisted reporting which students and professionals can apply to a database that they want to analyze. Identifies 13 such strategies, giving an example of each, pointing out some keys to selecting each strategy, and suggesting software most appropriate for carrying out each strategy. (SR)

Constructs a recursion programming learning system based on Socratic dialog which presents questions to students and encourages them to reflect on their own thinking. Highlights include implementation using database techniques; evaluation by empirical methods; and results of pretests and posttests that show a positive impact on recursion…

The volume of data available through literature and databases on the internet is valuable to students as resources. Describes an integrated approach that involves the use of the library, literature, and internet databases. (Author/SAH)

These six articles discuss knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). Topics include data mining; knowledge management systems; applications of knowledge discovery; text and Web mining; text mining and information retrieval; user search patterns through Web log analysis; concept analysis; data collection; and data structure inconsistency. (LRW)