The Four Directions Project, administered by the Pueblo of Laguna Department of Education, is a 5-year federally-funded technology innovation grant that aims to help Native people and their educators develop culturally relevant curricula through technology. This report includes the full text of 45 "pathfinders" designed by students in…

As a way to teach database searching skills, students in a nursing research class were paired with, and performed literature searches for, faculty members or community health care professionals. Because students did not formulate questions or initial search terms, they concentrated on the search process, learning how professionals find and use…

Discusses the current state of American public education and identifies collegiality as being important in bringing about educational improvements. Topics discussed include individualization in the teaching and learning process; the role of the school media specialist; continuing teacher education; end-user searching of databases; and in-house…

Describes a study of graduate students that examined search behavior and affective response to a hypertext-based bibliographic information retrieval system called HyperLynx for searchers with different search skills and backgrounds. Previous experience with hypertext or Boolean searching is examined, and search times are discussed. (21 references)…

Presents abstracts of 15 special interest group (SIG) sessions. Topics include navigation and information utilization in the Internet, natural language processing, automatic indexing, image indexing, classification, users' models of database searching, online public access catalogs, education for information professions, information services,…

Discussion of the use of CD-ROM databases for end-user searching versus online database searching in academic libraries focuses on a comparison of two databases, "Psychological Abstracts" and "Sociological Abstracts," that were searched in both formats. Factors of response time, coverage, content, and cost were investigated for…

Discusses factors to consider in identifying and accessing appropriate data sources for environmental chemical information and describes three training programs for end-users: (1) a course on retrieval of information on dangerous substances; (2) a seminar on German offline databases on chemicals; and (3) a workshop on the Information System for…

Presents five papers from the American Library Association's June 27, 1992, conference session, "The Right to Know: Will Changing Our Instruction Methods Empower the Public," in which panelists debate the design and impact of bibliographic instruction and the provision of reference services in academic and high school libraries. (EA)

Describes the use of DIALOG and Classmate by students at McDowell High School (Texas). Requirements for accessing DIALOG are explained; methods of teaching using DIALOG are described, including planning search strategy and the use of small groups; and problems are reviewed, including supervision time, cost, and limited accessibility. (three…

Discussion of the cost effectiveness of searching online versus searching on CD-ROM highlights an example that compares costs for searching the ERIC database. Fixed costs and variable costs are described, labor costs are examined, implications for management are considered, and the effect of the number of databases and workstations is discussed.…

Discussion of the information search process (ISP) from the user's perspective focuses on a model of the ISP derived from longitudinal studies of high school and college students. Cognitive and affective aspects of the ISP are discussed, and their implications for future research are suggested. (31 references) (LRW)

Describes experiments in Arabic information retrieval using 29 queries against a base of 355 bibliographic records. Using roots and stems as index terms worked better than words, and the root performed as well as or better than the stem at low recall levels and definitely better at high recall levels. (Contains 30 references.) (KRN)

Reports on a study of citation retrieval performance using three Internet-accessible databases and a database composed of six Wilson databases. Variables examined included citation frequency, percentage of unique periodicals cited per search, and relevancy of citations to stated search topic. The implications of the data for database selection are…

Discussion of text files and textual analysis in humanities research focuses on the results of two surveys of Research Libraries Group (RLG) academic libraries which was conducted to identify the systems used to support text files. Description of a system at the University of Michigan includes examples of screen formats, and seven sidebars…

Describes study that was conducted to determine whether the search process is the same for academic, public, and school library users. Cognitive models of information seeking are discussed, users' attitudes during the search process are described, the role mediators play is examined, and future research needs are suggested. (26 references) (LRW)