Subject Classification of Collection-level Descriptions Using DDC for Information Landscaping

Collection-level description (CLD) has emerged as an important tool for facilitating user access to large heterogeneous collections within digital library and hybrid information environments. Such metadata enables "information landscaping" techniques to be deployed, thereby allowing users to survey, discover and identify relevant collections. This can aid the precision of item-level queries by eliminating collections which may produce a significant number of false-drops or may contain no relevant items. The ability to provide suitable subject indexing and subject-based organization within such collection-level environments is an increasingly important user requirement, particularly for landscaping; yet it remains highly problematic owing to, for example, the broad subject coverage of many collections and the item-level nature of controlled vocabularies. In this paper we propose a methodology for the subject designation of collections using the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). The proposed approach allows the establishment of reliable, consistent and meaningful DDC class numbers to facilitate improved user browsing and searching tools within CLD systems. The methodology will be demonstrated using the Scottish Collections Network (SCONE) and alternative techniques to facilitate general subject analysis will also discussed

Finding a Common Method of Presenting Electronic Journals on Academic Law Library Web Sites: Or, I'd Rather Be Herding Cats

This study examines the manner in which e-journals are made accessible to users on 75 academic law library web sites. Information recorded included the utilization of MARC tags, the types of search functions provided, and the accessibility of links to both the database, GPO Access and the e-journal Issues in Legal Scholarship. The resulting data was then used to evaluate how effective library web sites were in presenting electronic periodicals to users. Conclusions drawn from these observations were used in conjunction with research regarding the information retrieval skills of library users conducted by other authors in order to formulate a suggested set of best practices for law library web site design

Information retrieval by metabrowsing

This article investigates a new, effective browsing approach called metabrowsing. It is an alternative for current information retrieval systems, which still face six prominent difficulties. We identify and classify the difficulties and show that the metabrowsing approach alleviates the difficulties associated with query formulation and missing domain knowledge. Metabrowsing is a high-level way of browsing through information: instead of browsing through document contents or document surrogates, the user browses through a graphical representation of the documents and their relations to the domain. The approach requires other cognitive skills from the user than what is currently required. Yet, a user evaluation in which the metabrowsing system was compared with an ordinary query-oriented system showed only some small indicatory differences in effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction. We expect that more experience with metabrowsing will result in a significantly better performance difference. Hence, our conclusion is that the development of new cognitive skills requires some time before the technologies are ready to be used

Information Retrieval in Medicine: The Visual and the Invisible

SummaryEspecially in knowledge-rich domains such as medicine perfect access to the literature is essential for professionals. Unfortunately, especially in knowledge-rich domains it is difficult to achieve perfect access: it is too difficult and too time consuming for users to formulate queries that yield the maximum of relevant documents and a minimum of non-relevant ones. The paper first discusses the challenges of information retrieval in medicine and various existing approaches. To address the challenges two completely opposite approaches are presented. The first supports the user by means of metabrowsing: a visual way of depicting the relations between domain concepts and documents. Metabrowsing relieves the user from the formulation of queries, while leaving him in full control. The second approach aims to minimize the interaction with the user. Information needs and queries are autonomously and proactively formulated by a software-agent who remains invisible to the user. The agent uses the electronic patient record of a particular patient and domain knowledge. As a result, the agent provides the doctor with literature that is relevant with respect to the patient at hand