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In This Issue
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1
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In this issue
Bert Boyce
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Research
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3
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Mapping Information Policy Frames The Politics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Terrence A. Maxwell
Published online 19 September 20033
In this issue we begin with Maxwell who is interested in how government representatives, authors, user advocates, content providers,
and internet service providers, stakeholders all in the debates over the formulation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, framed their positions as shown in their testimony in the nine
relevant congressional hearings, as well as which groups were most effective. All hearing utterances by an individual were consolidated into a single document resulting in 71 documents, 29 from
congress and 42 from stakeholders. Maxwell's policy taxonomy which develops 8 classes Communal Cohesion, Marketplace of Ideas, Knowledge Creation, Individual Happiness, Information Dissemination,
Information Ownership, Global Village, and Global Hegemony, was utilized as a framework. Concordance software produced 1537 words that were consolidated into 88 coding terms assigned as indicators to
the appropriate taxonomic class. The documents were then auto-coded with AtlasTi content analysis software generating a file of 4,441 content units with at least one code. A factor
analysis produced key terms in different sectors of the taxonomy and an MDS run produced
4 clusters both indicating participants expressed themselves across multiple taxonomic sectors. While Congress displayed linkages indicating attempts to play a balancing role, congressional framing tended to be closer to content providers than to other groups.
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13
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Spatialization of Web Sites Using a Weighted Frequency Model of Navigation Data
René F. Reitsma, Lehana Thabane, and J. Michael B. MacLeod
Published online 23 October 2003
Reitsma, Thabane, and MacLeod are interested in the display of document sets as visualized geometric spaces. Such spaces can use
metrics and dimensions determined arbitrarily prior to analysis of data, or they may use secondary data (logged website transaction counts, perhaps) with techniques like factor analysis or MDS to
find a structure. Using high transaction volume between an origin and a destination as an indicator of a small distance and a low volume as an indicator of a large distance, a transaction log can
provide input to MDS. One problem is the possible origination of multiple sessions from the same address where one can not determine if consecutive requests are part of the same transaction and thus
frequencies may be invalid. They suggest the use of the probability that a count is a transaction as a weight rather the count alone, with this probability depending upon the time separation
between an origin and a destination with less time indicating a higher probability. A transaction log for a website for undergraduate engineering learning was analyzed in this manner and
weighted transaction counts were compared to the use of straight count inputs to MDS using the Euclidean metric and four dimensions. Weighted results were not significantly different.
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23
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Localization in Modern Standard Arabic
Ahmed Abdelali
Published online 22 September 2003
Abdelali points out that spoken Arabic variants can be large enough to affect comprehensibility while Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
is taught in schools, and used by the media in 21 Arab countries. He investigates the degree of variation from country to country in MSA by examining various Arabic language newspapers available in
machine readable form on the Web. While 48% of words collected are unique to their source, most of these occur less than three times, and a threshold above three decreases the uniqueness percentage
dramatically indicating in general a high degree of uniformity. Differences are identified based upon spelling, transliteration of English and French words, different degrees of usage
geographically, local only use of tribal names, and imported words.
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29
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Enhanced Web Document Retrieval Using Automatic Query Expansion
M. Shamim Khan and Sebastian Khor
Published online 19 September 2003
Khan and
Khor want to expand the traditionally short web query using contiguous term phrases of four or less non-verbs extracted from the first 40 sentences of initially retrieved documents. A rule governed tagging scheme is utilized to identify noun phrases. Each identified phrase is then searched independently, so that the top of the retrieved list for each can be skimmed. Using three questions obtained from questioning past searchers, and doing their own category decisions for relevance judgements, they ran the analysis on the top thirty documents retrieved for each query and scored the documents retrieved by the initial and expanded searches with a 1 or 0 depending upon the presence of the predetermined categories. For two out of the three queries the relevance scores of the initial queries are higher than the expanded queries, but expansion did succeed in retrieving more categories than the initial queries.
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41
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Information Search Performance and Research Achievement An Empirical Test of the Anxiety-Expectation Mediation Model of
Library Anxiety
Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie and Qun G. Jiao
Published online 19 September 2003
Onwuegbbuzie and Jiao have, with Bostick, presented an information literacy process model of library anxiety, which they believe is
a significant problem in the use of academic libraries by students not particularly anxious in other areas of their lives. The Anxiety-Expectation Mediation or
AEM model is a structural equation model that incorporates library anxiety, research proposal writing achievement, age, GPA, learning style, perfectionism, academic procrastination, hope, and academic self perception. Here Onwuegbbuzie and Jiao are interested in whether anxiety effects educational outcomes. Using 225 graduate students from a introductory level research methods course, scores were obtained on the Library Anxiety Scale, Self-Perception Profile for College Students, the Hope Scale, the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students, Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Productivity Environmental Preference Survey, and a Background Demographic form was completed. Library anxiety and academic self-perception mediate the relationship between ability to write research proposals and the other variables thus supporting the AEM model. Library anxiety is related negatively to research performance while self-perception is related positively.
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Catalogers' Common Ground and Shared Knowledge
Alenka Sauperl
Published online 7 October 2003
Sauperl believes that an indexer's subject interpretation of a document is dependent upon the sociologically constructed knowledge
state of the author, the likely user, and that of the indexer herself, and that each such state can result in differing interpretations. She believes that this places the source of indexing
inconsistency with the indexer's background and culture and conducts think aloud observations and interviews with twelve American academic library catalogers to construct a model of the indexing
process and to
determine if they are aware of the inconsistency situation. Meaning is gathered from the document itself, but also from public sources, the practice of the individual library, and the cataloger's interest and experience. Catalogers are aware of the multi-meaning problem and actively tried to limit its effects, but are more oriented toward the cataloging community than toward readers or authors viewpoints.
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64
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Literature Growth, Journal Characteristics, and Author Productivity in Subject Indexing, 1977 to 2000
Ming-yueh Tsay
Published online 30 September 2003
Ming-yueh Tsay conducts a bibliometric study of 24 years of the literature of subject indexing as collected by searching LISA for
the term "subject indexing" from 1977 to 2000, identifying 14,382 items. The literature grew rapidly from 1978 to 1981, slows from 1983 to 1985, and resumes strong growth from 1987 to 1991.
There is a drastic reduction in new papers in 1992, an even greater fall in 1993, and production then continues at this level, providing a relatively good fit for a logistic curve. Journal articles
provide 78% of the items, proceedings 16.3%, and books about 6%. Article distribution shows the typical Bradford distribution. Authors of a single item constituted 76.7% of the set, with an average
production of 1.4 papers per author. The observed data on author productivity do not conform with Lotka's law.
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74
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An Experiment Using Coordinate Title Word Searches
Frederick G. Kilgour
Published online 4 November 2003
Once again Kilgour looks at the efficacy of known item title word search using the University of Michigan Online Public Access
Catalog.
In previous tests he found single screen display results 84% of the time using surname and one title word, 96.1% of the time using surname plus both first and last title word, and 98.5% of the time using surname and researcher chosen significant title words. Here he uses title words alone to search for 749 records selected from those used at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the first half of 1993. One fifth of these items had no authors. Use of title words alone was successful 86.4% of the time with items having personal authors and 91.5% of the time with anonymous items. Use of title words is consistently more productive than the 53.8% success rate of author alone search.
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Brief Communication
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81
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An Improved Fast Encoding Algorithm for Vector Quantization
Li-Juan Liu, Xu-Bang Shen, and Xue-Cheng Zou
Published online 22 September 2003
Liu, Zou, and Shen provide an algorithm for image data compression using a vector quantization technique which appears more
efficient than the previous vector quantization technique and which they claim will speed up a code book searching process.
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Book Reviews
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88
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Technology and the New Economy, edited by Chong-En Bai and Chi-Wa Yuen
John Cullen
Published online 19 September 2003
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89
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The Universal Computer The Road From Leibniz to Turing, by Martin Davis
Julian Warner
Published online 28 October 2003
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90
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XML Data Management Native XML and XML-Enabled Database Systems, edited by Akmal B. Chaudhri, Awais Rashid, and Roberto Zicari
Nicholas Rhodes
Published online 28 October 2003
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92
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Letters to the Editor
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Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology
