January 31, 1994 Volume XI, Number 5 Issue 198 ************************************************************* I. NOTICES A. Meeting Announcements/Calls for Papers 1. Workshop on Digital Libraries B. Publication Announcements 1. Information Processing & Management: 30:3 TOC II. QUERIES B. Requests for Information 1. Publicly Available Information-Retrieval Systems 2. Internet-Based Technology Watch Services IV. PROJECT WORK C. Abstracts 1. IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts ************************************************************* I. NOTICES I.A.1. Fr: Timothy Finin Re: Workshop on Digital Libraries Workshop on Digital Libraries: Current Issues Thursday, May 19 and Friday 20, 1994 kshop Co-Chairs: Nabil R. Adam, Bharat K. Bhargava, Yelena Yesha ital libraries are destined to be the first true archives of integrated imedia data. Currently, we have corpora of text, image, and sound files. oon we expect to have corpora of electronic books which are capable of subsuming most of the media we use today and have the potential for added unctionality by being interactive. A digital library is a unification of all available data repositories through a single interface. That interface should be expected to cope with whatever kind of data, e.g., text, image, and sound that is being retrieved. Furthermore, this interface should serve as an effective access means for scientists, engineers, managers as well as everyday individuals. h the new initiative to build a better information infrastructure, it has come even more important to develop better means for managing, locating, and retrieving information and knowledge bases. believe that the technologies of Parallelism, Networking/ Communications, lti-media, User-interfaces, Database Management, and Information Management will play an important role in making digital libraries a reality. ECTIVE: The aim of the workshop is to provide an international forum to uss evolving research issues and applications in digital libraries. Invited speakers from industry, universities, and government will present their eriences and vision for the future. e following are among the invited speakers and panelists: Ron Ashany, Program Director, Database and Expert Systems, NSF - Ed Fox, Virginia Tech - Milton Halem, Chief of Space Data and Computing Division, NASA - Mike Lesk, Bellcore - William Steele, Director, Business Development, GTE n Tiedeman, Vice-President, AT&T. ORMATION TO AUTHORS: Authors interested in participating in the workshop are invited to submit a 3-page abstract by Feb. 28, 1994 to: Prof. Nabil R. Adam utgers University 180 University Ave. Newark, NJ 07102 01) 648-5239 adam@adam.rutgers.edu ification of acceptance will be sent by March 15, 1994. An edited book and special issue of a journal are planned. ******************** B.1. Fr: Lauren Levey e: ToC for IP&M Volume 30, Number 3 ormation Processing & Management Volume 30, Number 3 1994 Contents Fields rmation Seeking Dialogues liam Hood 327 Indexing Terms in the LISA Database Concepcion S. Wilson on CD-ROM Retrieval Systems Efficient Access to Picture Data l Bryson 389 A Qualitative Discriminant Proc ess for anki K. Ngwenyama Scoring and Ranking in Group Support Ayodele Mobolurin Systems ntal Bedecarrax 407 A New Methodology for Systematic Charles Huot Exploitation of Technology Databases k Reviews ake (Ed.) ************************************************************* II. QUERIES II.B.1. Fr: David John O'Connor Re: Request for publicly-available info-retrieval systems interested in a text-retrieval program for Unix with the source code available. I am also interested in AT&T's Style natural language parser. (I heard it may be on Internet at MIT or somewhere else.) Please let me know if you are aware of these tools. nks, Dave ******************** I.B.2. Fr: Scott Guthery Re: Internet-Based Technology Watch Services looking for "Internet-enabled" current awareness, document search, and nology watch services ... e-mail alerts, contract newsgroups, fee-based WAIS databases, membership Gopher holes, metered WWW pages, etc. 's Shadow Patent Office, Techical Insights, SandPoint, and Teltech are all examples. there a newsgroup or FAQ that lists such? E-mail me any pointers. I'll follow-up and post the result. nks, Scott ************************************************************* IV. PROJECT WORK IV.C.1. Fr: Susanne M. Humphrey Re: Selected IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts following are citations selected by title and abstract as being related to Information Retrieval (IR), resulting from a computer search, using BRS rmation Technologies, of the Dissertation Abstracts Online database produced by University Microfilms International (UMI). Included are UMI order number, title, author, degree, year, institution; number of pages, one or more ertation Abstracts International (DAI) subject descriptors chosen by the hor, and abstract. Unless otherwise specified, paper or microform copies of dissertations may be ordered from University Microfilms International, ertation Copies, Post Office Box 1764, Ann Arbor, MI 48106; telephone for S. (except Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska): 1-800-521-3042, for Canada: 1-800-268-6090. Price lists and other ordering and shipping information are in the introduction to the published DAI. An alternate source for copies is metimes provided. Dissertation titles and abstracts contained here are ished with permission of University Microfilms International, publishers of Dissertation Abstracts International (copyright by University Microfilms International), and may not be reproduced : without their prior permission. University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-33281. AU COX, RICHARD JAMES. ARCHIVAL INSTITUTIONS AND EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES, WITH SPECIAL ENTION TO STATE ARCHIVES AND STATE ARCHIVISTS. IN University of Pittsburgh Ph.D. 1992, 426 pages. SO DAI V53(06), SecA, pp1708. DE Library Science. Information Science. AB Since the mid-1960s, archivists in the United States have bee n engaged in the challenge of managing records created by electronic information systems. Despite three decades of activity, few archival institutions have developed programs to administer and preserve these special records. This study is an effort to nderstand why American archivists seem to have fared so poorly in the administration of electronic records by re-examining two major aspects of the archival profession: its institutional forms and structures (position descriptions and advertisements) and its educational foundations (graduate and continuing education programs). The primary research question being scrutinized in this study is this: Is the archival profession prepared to carry out its mission in the modern electronic information technology environment. s study concludes that the archival profession in the United States has not done well in structuring itself to manage electronic records. Five aspects of this American professional community suggest this conclusion. First, the ofessional literature seems to lack consensus on the nature of the impact of electronic records on archival theory and practice and how such records should be administered. Second, state government archives' position descriptions do not generally reflect knowledge and skill requirements needed for the management of electronic records. Third, there were virtually no job advertisements from 1976 through 1990 for electronic records specialists. Fourth, graduate archival education programs have offered only a few full courses on electronic records management, and the size and nature of these programs provide little opportunity for educating future archivists in electronic records work. Fifth, and finally, the advanced institute on electronic records and information policy offered to state government archivists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Science from 1989 through 1992 suggests some of the weaknesses in the archival profession's reliance on continuing education for electronic records administration training. pite the findings of this study, however, there are recent indications that the American archival profession is improving its ability to deal with tronic records. New publications, courses, programs, and research grant s have appeared in the early 1990s. The impact of these recent developments on the American archivist's management of electronic records is, however, too early to determine. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-31562. AU LONDERGAN, GAIL B. P. AND INFORMATION SCIENCE REGARDING WHAT CONSTITUTES "CREATIVITY", AND T HEIR RATINGS OF RECENT DISSERTATIONS. IN Indiana University Ph.D. 1992, 214 pages. SO DAI V53(06), SecA, pp1709. DE Library Science. Information Science. Education, Higher. AB The questions addressed in this study relate to a problem whi ch is, in part, a conceptual issue--how "creativity" in research is defined in library and information science, and whether or not it is valued independently of "significance" in research. A new model of the phenomenon of "creativity" is proposed. The process of evaluation of research products with respect to their "creativity" then is placed within the context provided by the model. questionnaire developed for the project includes both an exercise in which evaluators of research explicitly define "significance" and "creativity," and an exercise in which they rate dissertations--based upon their abstracts--vis-a-vis their potential "significance" and "creativity." The questionnaire also was designed to allow respondents to self-select into library-science or information-science specializations, if they so desired. A random sample of faculty eligible to serve on dissertation committees in accredited schools of library and information science was sent the questionnaire. ults indicated how respondents define "creativity;" that "creativity" and ignificance" are distinct concepts in the minds of respondents; that judgments regarding "creativity" and "significance" are made independently of each other; that while "creativity" is a factor in assessing the "overall merit" of research products, "significance" is more closely associated with "merit;" and that library-science and information-science specialists do not really differ with respect to any of the central research questions. s particular project focused upon activity in the domain of library and rmation science. However, both the model and the questionnaire--modified to include abstracts of dissertations from other areas rather than from library and information science--are seen as directly applicable to study of other academic domains as well. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-33283. AU ZENG, LEI. CATALOGING. IN University of Pittsburgh Ph.D. 1992, 241 pages. SO DAI V53(06), SecA, pp1710. DE Library Science. Information Science. AB The purpose of the study was to evaluate the quality of Chine se-language records in a large multilingual bibliographic database, and to develop a viable approach for improving its quality. Research questions included current quality of and commonly occurring errors in the member-contributed Chinese records in the OCLC database, and the development of a set of production rules for a data idation system for Chinese online cataloging. 1,306 member-contributed hinese records were randomly selected from the OCLC database and classified into a OCLC Sample and an RLIN Sample based on source of the record. Errors were categorized into 3 classes and 19 subgroups: Format errors covered incorrect use of tags, indicators, subfield codes, and incorrect punctuation and spaces as required by ISBD; Content errors included missing fields, inconsistency between fields and/or attributes, etc.; and Editing and inputting errors included nadequate spacing, misspelling, etc. Under the OCLC standards, 72.5% of the records in the OCLC sample and 89.4% in the RLIN sample contained errors, with error means of 2.23 and 4.76. But the above number for the RLIN Sample will be reduced by nearly half if the RLIN standards are applied. Error occurrence rankings were based on types and itions of error distribution. Content errors formed the largest percentage of the total errors, format errors the smallest, and editing and inputting errors in between. Field 245, 260, 4/8xx, and 7xx had the highest rates of error ccurrence. Error frequency distribution in both samples obeyed the generalized Poisson distribution model rather than a normal distribution. Regression results gave a weak and insignificant relationship between times a record was enhanced and the errors occurring in the record. uction rules for eliminating common errors were developed, focusing on improving completeness, consistency, and correctness of a record. A post-test indicated that completeness checking was the most successful, followed by onsistency checking. The rules covered 11 of the total 19 kinds of errors. At least 64% of the errors which occurred in the OCLC Sample and 70% of the errors in the RLIN Sample could be detected automatically by applying the production rules. ********************************************************** ST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of ary Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. d subscription requests to: NCG@UCCMVSA.UCOP.EDU Send submissions to IRLIST to: NCG@UCCMVSA.UCOP.EDU torial Staff: Clifford Lynch calur@uccmvsa.ucop.edu or calur@uccmvsa.bitnet Nancy Gusack ncgur@uccmvsa.ucop.edu or nancy.gusack@dla.ucop.edu Mary Engle meeur@uccmvsa.ucop.edu or mary.engle@dla.ucop.edu IRLIST Archives is now set up for anonymous FTP, as well as via the LISTSERV. ng anonymous FTP via the host dla.ucop.edu, the files will be found in the directory pub/irl, stored in subdirectories by year (e.g., /pub/irl/1993). g LISTSERV, send the message INDEX IR-L to LISTSERV@UCCVMA.BITNET. 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