Editorial

CIT. Journal of Computing and Information Technology brings in its third issue five papers from the broad area of computer science research and application. The papers address issues in information risk assessment, cognitive radio networks, parallel architectures for data mining, multi-agent simulation of industrial facilities, and cross-language information retrieval.</p

Issues in evaluating the retrieval performance of multiscript translation of Al-Quran

The main aim of this paper is to present on the issues of evaluating the retrieval performance of the multi-script indexing of translated texts of al-Quran. Translations of al-Quran has played a major role in the recitation of al-Quran in its original texts and understanding through the translated words, among the public. Even in querying, non-Arabic speakers will find the texts through the translated words in addition to topical search. Transliteration is a need in the absence of terminology in the normal conduct of Cross-Language Information Retrieval research area, while in the case of this research, the transliterated version was meant for those with the ability to read the older script in its own original translation. The Malay Roman script has its own version of the translation. Objectives include to examine the reported retrieval performance of these texts and to evaluate the retrieval performance of the translations available in two different scripts of a language: Malay Rumi and Malay Jawi, built upon Pimpinan ar-Rahman version, Indri and Jawi software. Measures include recall, precision and overlap. Recall explains the performance in retrieving all relevant items, while precision describes the performance in rejecting non-relevant items. Overlap exhibits the retrieval of items common in both sub-collections. Queries are constructed from questions posed by newspaper readers in both scripts resulted as keywords with semantic, while relevance judgment is made by a panel of expert based on answers to the questions. Findings based on recall, precision and overlaps revealed the major issues of standardized texts, translation and transliteration, text alignments, queries construction, question-answering relevance vs. topical relevance. Indri's performance is not a major issue, while the Jawi software requires improvement to a minor extent. This paper contributes to the issues of handling test collections involving parallel corpus in the area of Cross Language IR facing the Muslim World

Z39.50 broadcast searching and Z-server response times: perspectives from CC-interop

This paper begins by briefly outlining the evolution of Z39.50 and the current trends, including the work of the JISC CC-interop project. The research crux of the paper focuses on an investigation conducted with respect to testing Z39.50 server (Z-server) response times in a broadcast (parallel) searching environment. Customised software was configured to broadcast a search to all test Z-servers once an hour, for eleven weeks. The results were logged for analysis. Most Z-servers responded rapidly. 'Network congestion' and local OPAC usage were not found to significantly influence Z-server performance. Response time issues encountered by implementers may be the result of non-response by the Z-server and how Z-client software deals with this. The influence of 'quick and dirty' Z39.50 implementations is also identified as a potential cause of slow broadcast searching. The paper indicates various areas for further research, including setting shorter time-outs and greater end-user behavioural research to ascertain user requirements in this area. The influence more complex searches, such as Boolean, have on response times and suboptimal Z39.50 implementations are also emphasised for further study. This paper informs the LIS research community and has practical implications for those establishing Z39.50 based distributed systems, as well as those in the Web Services community. The paper challenges popular LIS opinion that Z39.50 is inherently sluggish and thus unsuitable for the demands of the modern user

Beyond English text: Multilingual and multimedia information retrieval.

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