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Journal of the Association for Information Science |
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IN THIS ISSUE |
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Bert R. Boyce
In this issue we find two bibliometric articles, a study of book review usage, a study of the search term selection process, and a look at the relationship between assumptions of user behavior and variations in performance measures. We begin with a review of information retrieval agents. |
303 |
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RESEARCH |
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Intelligent Information Agents: Review and Challenges for Distributed Information Sources
Donna S. Haverkamp and Susan Gauch
An information retrieval agent is query processing software that is autonomous (able to operate without human intervention), social (able to communicate with other agents and humans), reactive (able to perceive and react to their environment), and pro-active (able to exhibit goal directed behavior and initiative). A review of current agent systems by Haverkamp and Gauch finds they have relatively small domains but that standardization efforts are underway.
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304 |
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From Translation to Navigation of Different Discourses: A Model of Search Term Selection during the Pre-Online Stage of the Search Process
Mirja Iivonen and Diane H. Sonnenwald
Thirty-two searchers with diverse experience formulated query statements for 12 written queries each. They were then asked by Iivonen and Sonnenwald to explain, while being recorded, the process used to formulate the queries and select the terms. Basic concepts were identified from the analysis of transcripts.
Search term selection is not effectively modeled by the view that only the translation of client's words to search terms is involved. Multiple discourses (ways of thinking about a topic) are involved for any topic and these may change over time. Beyond the client's search requests, controlled vocabularies, searcher's experience, indexing practice, the database, and the domains of the documents are all identified as involved in the selection process. All searchers do not use all discourses in every query and they move dynamically from one discourse to another in the term selection process.
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312 |
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Visualizing a Discipline: An Author Co-Citation Analysis of Information Science, 1972---1995
Howard D. White and Katherine W. McCainpage
Those authors cited for a 24-year period in 12 journals chosen as defining information science and library automation provide a corpus from which the 120 most cited were chosen by White and McCain. The co-citation data from all pairs were then used to provide a categorization of the discipline through factor analysis. The mean co-citation counts for each author in each of three 8 year periods and for the 24 year span, two dimensional maps of the relative position of the top 100 authors in each period, a map of authors whose relative positions change over time, and a map of those who remain in the top 100 for all three periods are also provided.
The article devotes considerable time to a justification of Author Co-citation Analysis and provides sufficient methodological detail to be used as a cookbook for the application of these statistical data reduction methods to bibliographic data. |
327 |
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Robustness of Well-Designed Retrieval Performance Measures under Optimal User Behavior
John R. Conlon and Sumali J. Conlon
A probability model of a retrieval system is developed by Conlon and Conlon to show that if a user is employing a retrieval system optimally, performance measures based on the user's objective function will be insensitive to variations in assumptions of user behavior. The use of Salton and McGill data upholds the theoretical result.
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356 |
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Use of Scholarly Book Reviews: Implications for Electronic Publishing and Scholarly Communication
Amanda Spink, David Robins, and Linda Schamber
At the University of North Texas 997 faculty (186 responding) were surveyed by Spink, Robins, and Schamber as to their use of book reviews. Most respondents (both science and humanities groups) read between one and ten book reviews per month and found most reviews in scholarly journals. The humanities and social science faculty placed more value on comments by authoritative reviews while the science and technology faculty valued content description. Neither group considered time lag in finding reviews a problem and the humanities and social science group place much more value on the use of reviews in research and teaching. |
364 |
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BRIEF COMMUNICATION |
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Citation Indicators of Japanese Journals
Zhang Haiqi and Shigeaki Yamazaki
Haiqi finds that fifteen Japanese journals, all English language, had an impact factor over one in 1994. Japanese journals exhibit a high rate of self citation, and Japanese scientists contribute their best articles to other than Japanese journals. |
375 |
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BOOK REVIEWS |
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Automating the Lexicon: Research and Practice in a Multilingual Environment edited by Donald E. Walker, Antonio Zampolli, and Nicoletta Calzolari
Reviewed by: P. Zoë Stavri
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380 |
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Language and Space
edited by Paul Bloom, Mary A. Peterson, Lynn Nadel, and Merrill F. Garrett
Reviewed by: Bryce Allen
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381 |
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The Economics of Information: A Guide to Economic and Cost-Benefit Analysis for Information Professionals
by Bruce R. Kingma
Reviewed by: Herbert Snyder
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382 |
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Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference
by Robert L. Harris
Reviewed by: Robert D. Wilson
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383 |
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Ergonomics and Safety of Intelligent Driver Interfaces
edited by Y. Ian Noy
Reviewed by: Mark P. Haselkorn
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384 |
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Technology and Management in Library and Information Services
by F. W. Lancaster and Beth Sandore
Reviewed by: Michael Buckland
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385 |
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Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
edited by Usama M. Fayyad, Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, Padraic Smyth, and Ramasamy Uthurusamy
Reviewed by: Frank Exner, Little Bear
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386 |
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Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure
edited by Brian Kahin and Charles Nesson
Reviewed by: Julian Warner
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387 |
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Advanced Database Systems
by Carlo Zaniolo, Stefano Ceri, Christos Faloutsos, Richard T. Snodgrass, V. S. Subrahmanian, and Roberto Zicari
Reviewed by: Kyle Banerjee
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388 |
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The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway
by Ken Auletta
Reviewed by: Donald O. Case
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389 |
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Publishing Books
edited by Everette E. Dennis, Craig L. LaMay, and Edward C. Pease
Reviewed by: Richard J. Cox |
390 |
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
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© 1998 , Association for Information Science
Last update: November 06, 1998 |
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