Reports results of a study that examined Library of Congress topical subject headings and subdivisions in a large bibliographic database. Creation of a new machine-readable authority file of topical subdivisions and enhancements to the existing subject authority file are recommended to assist in assignment and validation of subdivided headings.…

Summarizes the first report on the Intergovernmental Records Project (IRP) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Topics discussed include the use of RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network), a lack of indexing consistency and access term selection, the need for standards, and shared cataloging. (six references) (LRW)

Discusses the use of thesauri in automatic indexing and describes the development of a prototype computerized abstractor's assistant. Topics addressed include TEXNET, a text network management system; the use of TEXNET for abstracting; the structure and use of a thesaurus for abstracting in TEXNET; and weighted terms. (Contains 26 references.)…

Describes a study that was conducted to determine how well subject authority lists, or thesauri, control indexing vocabulary. Indexer consistency using the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux (CAB) thesaurus was tested by comparing indexing done by CAB and by National Agricultural Library (NAL) indexers. (six references) (LRW)

Discussion of indexing consistency and its possible effect on information retrieval focuses on a study that compared indexing (or cataloging) consistency between Library of Congress catalogers and British Library catalogers assigning Library of Congress Subject Headings. The average indexing consistency value is calculated for 82 titles in library…

Compares and evaluates the indexes to the 1978 and 1988 editions of AACR2. The index format is examined, national and international standards are cited, syndetic structure is discussed, examples of missing entries and cross-references are provided, the chain index structure is described, and recommendations for future editions are presented.…

It is increasingly important to design local biomedical databases with attention to naming and classification standards. In some cases, common nomenclature will not be suitable, having been designed for another purpose, but much will be useful. Development of standard nomenclature is a social responsibility in the electronic biomedical community.…

Describes methods for applying natural-language processing for automatic concept-based indexing of full text and methods for exploiting the structure and hierarchy of full-text documents to a large collection of full-text documents drawn from the Health Services/Technology Assessment Text database at the National Library of Medicine. Examines how…

Reports the results of experiments with MEDLINE that used lexical statistics such as word-frequency counts to discover hidden connections in medical literature. Discusses problems with relying on bibliographic citations or standard indexing methods to establish a relationship between topics that might profitably be explored by scientific research.…

Provides tips on searching Chemical Abstracts (CA). Discusses coverage, indexing policies, differences between the print and online versions, transliterations, arrangement of the print indexes, abbreviations, and importance of the CA Index Guide for effective searching. (MES)

Describes efforts in supporting information retrieval from OCR (optical character recognition) degraded text. Reports on approaches used in an automatic cataloging and searching contest for books in multiple languages, including a vector space retrieval model, an n-gram indexing method, and a weighting scheme; and discusses problems of Asian…

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)

Provides a brief background of the Biological Abstracts' title index, "Biological Abstracts' Subject in Context" (BASIC) "Stop List," or compilation of nonsignificant words that were going to be automatically stopped from printing. Notes that the Stop List provided an improvement over the raw computer output of titles while…

Reports on a research project to build a new indexing technique, integrating experiences in database searching and indexing into a matrix model based on Internet use. Emphasizes the need for improving Web usability in specific domains and gives two examples from Italian Web sites, one for museums and one for health information. (Author/LRW)

Provides an introduction to articles in this special "Perspectives" issue of "Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology." The articles, taken collectively, contain significant elements of a research agenda in image indexing and retrieval for the next decade. Articles focus on user, representation,…