Form 15 (3/31/86) NSF PROJECT IST-850 5411 EXPERIMENTS ON THE COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF INFORMATION SEEKING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVING USER QUESTIONS FOR ONLINE SEARCHES QUESTION NUMBER: 034 A1. BRIEF TITLE: A type of expert system A2. QUESTION STATEMENT: Are there any rule based expert systems in which the inference engine does not direct the search? Such a system would provide the user with information to direct the search himself. An expert system is a computer program that gives advice. Rule based systems are based on a large set of logical rules. An inference engine is the part of the program that computes logical inferences from facts entered by the user and from other inferences. Inference engines commonly direct the search by a method described as backward chaining. TYPE OF SEARCH REQUESTED B. A precise or a broad search: Precise C. Research application: Faculty research - Electrical Engineering D. Retrieve articles in English only or any language: Any language E. Years to be searched: No limits F. DIALOG databases suggested: Š