This issues paper, fifth in a series of eight, is intended to distill formative evaluation questions on topics that are central to the development of the higher and further education information environment in the United Kingdom. The term "portal" is so widely used by so many people with so many different perspectives that definition is…

This 20-minute videotape looks at techniques for searching the Web and deals with other pertinent issues, such as performing Boolean searches, evaluating the usefulness of search engines and evaluating the resource materials found on the Web. A resource guide accompanies the tape. The guide consists of print training materials written by library…

This paper studies the influence of question-related variables (closed/open and predictable/unpredictable) on a Web user's choice of search strategy in the initial stage of a search. Search strategies considered include direct address, subject directory, and search engine. Objectives were to determine the adaptiveness of Web users in choosing an…

This paper discusses personal resource discovery on the World Wide Web from the point of view of a reference librarian. Two key questions for finding information on the Internet are identified: (1) What are you actually looking for? and (2) Who is likely to have the information? Examples of this approach are provided, and some problems with using…

This paper reports on a transaction log analysis of 51,473 queries from 18,113 users of Excite, a major World Wide Web search engine. Approximately 2,500 of these queries were from the use of relevance feedback. Given the high level of research activity and historical success of relevance feedback in assisting users in locating relevant…

This guide discusses the use of the World Wide Web for library reference service. Part 1, "Ready Reference on the Web: Resources for Patrons," contains chapters on searching and meta-searching the Internet, using the Web to find people, news on the Internet, quality reference resources on the Web, Internet sites for kids, free full-text…

This leaflet is a guide to data resources on the Internet related to education. The first Web site listed, http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/, allows the user to search for public and private elementary and secondary schools by name, city, state, or zip code. The second site, "The Students' Classroom," offers information on a range of…

Searching for useful information on the World Wide Web has become increasingly difficult. While Internet search engines have been helping people to search on the Web, low recall rate and outdated indexes have become more and more problematic as the Web grows. In addition, search tools usually present to the user only a list of search results,…

Currently, the World Wide Web contains an estimated 7.4 million sites (OCLC, 2001). Yet even the most experienced searcher, using the most robust search engines, can access only about 16% of these pages (Dahn, 2001). The other 84% of the publicly available information on the Web is referred to as the "hidden,""invisible," or…

Bibliographic records taken from books listed in "OCLC Selected Titles for Research and University Libraries" are used to determine whether the use of terms in the title for subject searching is an effective alternative to the use of Library of Congress subject headings among the 10 divisions of Dewey Decimal Classification. Terms in…

At BIOSIS, development of a retrieval system from the pragmatic viewpoint of providing viable self-supporting retrieval service from a data base of more than 2 million references has resulted in focusing attention on supporting the forumlation of the information need into an effective computer search specification. (JB)

Search procedures and techniques used by the Center staff are described; the computerized information systems and traditional resources used and types of search requests received are delineated. (Author/JB)

A substructure search screening system based on bond-centered fragements was evaluated using 108 queries derived from user SDI profiles. (Author/JB)

A major problem in the design of screening systems for substructure searches of chemical structure files is the development of a methodology for selection of an optimal set of structural characteristics to act as screens. Distributions of several structural characteristics of the Chemical Abstracts Service Registry System are summarized. (13…

Libraries are spending an increasing amount of money on acquisitions and an expanding portion of these expenditures is for microforms. It behooves the acquisitions librarian to be aware of changes and developments in microforms and to interpret what effect they will have on acquisitions. (50 references) (Author/SJ)