IRList Digest Saturday, 7 January 1989 Volume 5 : Issue 7 Today's Topics: Abstracts - More dissertations selected by S. Humphrey News addresses are Internet: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtcc1.bitnet (replaces foxea@vtvax3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Dec 88 07:54:33 EST From: "Susanne M. HUMPHREY" Subject: another batch of abstracts relating to IR AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-09547. AU BOUAZZA, ABDELMAJID. IN University of Pittsburgh Ph.D 1986, 154 pages. TI USE OF INFORMATION SOURCES BY PHYSICAL SCIENTISTS, SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANITIES SCHOLARS AT CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY. DE Information Science. AB This study investigated the frequency of use of information sources in general and for research and teaching purposes in particular by physical scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars at Carnegie-Mellon University. Out of 390 subjects, 240 answered the questionnaire, making the response rate 61.53 percent. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive (Means, standard of deviation, and proportions) and inferential (One-way ANOVA, Two-way ANOVA, and the Scheffe Test) statistics. The null of the three hypotheses of the study were tested at the.05 level of significance. The results obtained in this study showed that the three hypotheses were partially supported. It was found that physical scientists, social scientists, and humanists differed only in their use of informal sources of information in general, in data collection phase, and when developing a new course. No difference was registered in their use of formal sources of information for the same purposes. The impact of the variables tenure and experience on the use of information sources by the subjects has been investigated as an auxiliary factor and found nonsignificant. The findings of this study pointed to the importance of exhibitions, concerts, performances, A.V. materials, and the library resources to humanists. The same information sources were found of negligible importance to both physical scientists and social scientists when conducting a research project. The importance of using personal files by the three groups was observed. It was found that journals were especially important to physical scientists and social scientists. Also, it was found that the use of information sources by respondents varied from one phase of a research project to another. Thus, physical scientists, social scientists, and humanists tended to rely heavily on personal contact in the proposal phase and data analysis and interpretation phase, whereas this reliance appeared to decline in the data collection phase. Other findings were: the importance to respondents of personal contact and personal files as a stimulus for ideas in research; physical scientists and social scientists rated the use of journals for obtaining new ideas in research higher than that of textbooks; similarly, physical scientists and social scientists rated the use of textbooks as sources of new ideas in teaching higher than that of journals. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADGDX-82159. AU DANIELS, PENNY JANE. IN The City University (London) (United Kingdom) Ph.D 1987, 167 pages. TI DEVELOPING THE USER MODELLING FUNCTION OF AN INTELLIGENT INTERFACE FOR DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS. DE Information Science. AB Available from UMI in association with The British Library. This research forms part of a larger project, the eventual aim of which is the design and implementation of an intelligent interface for document retrieval systems. A number of functions which must be performed by the human intermediary in order to successfully interact with the user have been identified. The research presented here is concerned with one function in particular: the user modelling function, which aims to describe and model various aspects of the user's background, personal characteristics, goals and knowledge. An assumption underlying this research is that an intelligent interface should simulate the functional behaviour of a competent human intermediary. Therefore the ways in which human intermediaries carry out user modelling and employ these models, have been investigated. The primary method was to make audiorecordings of seven human user/human intermediary interviews in online search service settings, and to subject the transcripts to detailed functional discourse analysis. This analysis produced a specification for the User Model, and identified its components and the knowledge resources that are needed by the intermediary, whether human or automatic, to carry out the function of user modelling. This analysis was supplemented by the examination of a number of users' problem statements, together with their accompanying recordings, which had been collected for another project, and by interviews with three intermediaries. The discourse analysis revealed that the User Model interacts with the other interface functions, and this interaction was also investigated. The results showed that the User Model comprises a number of subfunctions, requires extensive knowledge resources, and interacts with the other functions, in particular providing information necessary for the other functions' own processing. A formalism for representing the User Model in a computer system is suggested, and an attempt is made to validate the User Model by applying it to a new dialogue. The results of the validation suggested that the User Model is independent of the data on which it is based, and that the formalism can adequately handle a new interaction. The implications of these findings for the design and implementation of the user modelling function in an intelligent interface, and for the design and implementation of the interface as a whole, are outlined. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADGDX-82189. AU REYNOLDS, JAMES E. F. IN The City University (London) (United Kingdom) Ph.D 1987, 360 pages. TI THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A FULL-TEXT DRUGS DATABASE: MARTINDALE ONLINE. DE Information Science. AB Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Martindale Online is a full-text database on drugs produced from a structured neutral database that is also used to produce a print product. Special characheristics of the database include a hierarchical record structure and a facility for linking records within the same hierarchy. The development of this database is described. Investigation at the development stage indicated a need to index the database and this was carried out using descriptors from a specially designed thesaurus. To evaluate the effect of this indexing, three information pharmacists selected 98 queries for an assessment of retrieval effectiveness; they and the author formulated sets of search statements that were used to search the file in several different ways. It was found that searching the indexed database via descriptors and free text (when appropriate) produced significantly better results, as judged by scores that incorporated precision and recall, than searching either the indexed or the unindexed database solely in a free-text manner. As there was evidence that searchers were slow to make use of the descriptors, highly structured search statements were created for each query using all the details from the relevant sections of the thesaurus and these statements were tested on the unindexed database. While this test produced some conflicting results, it did suggest that as far as major relevance was concerned such a method of searching might be effective with Martindale Online and is worth exploring further, especially with a view to producing a front-end system. Detailed failure analysis was carried out on the searches performed in the recommended manner. With the information pharmacists' search statements the database was operating at a recall ratio of 60.2 for all relevant records (69.3 for records of major relevance); with the author's statements the recall ratio was 65.4 (73.2 for major relevance). Corresponding precision ratios were 63.5 (58.3 for major relevance) for the information pharmacists and 67.5 (59.6) for the author. The largest cause of both recall and precision failure was in limitations of the search statements whether produced by the information pharmacists who had varied experience of Martindale Online, or by the author who has a detailed knowledge of the system and the contents. Limitations in the indexing also accounted for both types of failure; account has already been taken of these limitations and modifications have been made to some of the indexing guidelines. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-14221. AU CHEN, TSUNG-TENG. IN The University of Arizona Ph.D 1988, 279 pages. TI INFORMATION MANAGEMENT IN INTEGRATED INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS. DE Information Science. Business Administration, General. Computer Science. AB Information System development involves various activities; the process of developing information systems is considered to be the production of a series of documents. The information derived from the activities of the life cycle needs to be stored in a way that will facilitate the carrying out of subsequent activities. That is, information must be stored with a consistent, semantically rich, flexible, and efficient structure that will make it accessible for use by various tools employed in carrying out the development process. In this research, knowledge base management system (KBMS) to manage the information created by the information system development process was designed and implemented. Several contemporary popular knowledge representation schemes can be managed conveniently by this KBMS, which utilized efficient database techniques to facilitate fast retrieval and traversal of the underlying semantic inheritance net and frame knowledge structure. Inference and logic deduction capability was made a part of the static knowledge structure to further extend the functionality of the KBMS. Furthermore, a specially designed relational database management system was implemented and interfaced with the KBMS to alleviate the possibility of a storage saturation problem and to facilitate the storage of detailed exclusive information of terms defined in the knowledge base. Models that are applicable to various information system development activities were identified and stored in the knowledge base. The aggregation of those models is, in fact, a conceptual non-procedural language that provides a concise descriptive framework to help the user gather and manage information derived from various activities during the information system development process. The knowledge base, the language, and several knowledge-base related tools were used by more than seventy graduate students in a case study for a system analysis and design course. An information system methodology specifically tailored for this knowledge base supported environment was proposed and applied in a simplified case to illustrate the process of how a database-centered information system can be derived from the initial strategic planning phase. The methodology explored and made use of the storage structure of the closely coupled knowledge base and database. Finally, future research direction was identified. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-09947. AU SMITH, TIMOTHY WILLIAM. IN The University of Arizona PH. 1988, 378 pages. TI ASSESSING THE USABILITY OF USER INTERFACES: GUIDANCE AND ONLINE HELP FEATURES. DE Information Science. Business Administration, General. Computer Science. AB The purpose of this research was to provide evidence to support specific features of a software user interface implementation. A 3 x 2 x 2 full factorial, between subjects design was employed, in a laboratory experiment systematically varying existence or non-existence of a user interface and media of help documentation (either online or written), while blocking for varying levels of user experience. Subjects completed a set of tasks using a computer, so the experimenters could collect and evaluate various performance and attitudinal measures. Several attitudinal measures were developed and validated as part of this research. Consistent with previous findings, this research found that a user's previous level of experience in using a computer had a significant impact on their performance measures. Specifically, increased levels of user experience were associated with reduced time to complete the tasks, fewer number of characters typed, fewer references to help documentation, and fewer requests for human assistance. In addition, increased levels of user experience were generally associated with higher levels of attitudinal measures (general attitude toward computers and satisfaction with their experiment performance). The existence of a user interface had a positive impact on task performance across all levels of user experience. Although experienced users were not more satisfied with the user interface than without it, their performance was better. This contrasts with at least some previous findings that suggest experienced users are more efficient without a menu-driven user interface. The use of online documentation, as opposed to written, had a significant negative impact on task performance. Specifically, users required more time, made more references to the help documentation, and required more human assistance. However, these users generally indicated attitudinal measures (satisfied) that were as high with online as written documentation. There was a strong interaction between the user interface and online documentation for the task performance measures. This research concludes that a set of tasks can be performed in significantly less time when online documentation is facilitated by the presence of a user interface. Written documentation users seemed to perform equivalently with or without the user interface. With online documentation the user interface became crucial to task performance. Research implications are presented for practitioners, designers and researchers. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-14115. AU WHITLATCH, JO BELL. IN University of California, Berkeley Ph.D 1987, 388 pages. TI CLIENT/SERVICE PROVIDER PERCEPTIONS OF REFERENCE SERVICE OUTCOMES IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: EFFECTS OF FEEDBACK AND UNCERTAINTY. DE Library Science. Business Administration, General. AB The principal focus of the research concerns client participation in academic libraries. The study tests a model of the major variables influencing academic library reference service outcomes. This model is based primarily on boundary spanning theory. Organizational boundaries can be expected to create perceptual differences between clients and service providers in evaluating information services. Additional theories from the field or organizational behavior used in developing the model are: communication, social exchange, socialization, feedback, uncertainty and organizational effectiveness. Independent variables included in the model are: client socialization, service orientation, feedback, time constraints, task uncertainty, size, discipline paradigm and type of assistance. The dependent variables or service outcomes are: librarian value of service outcomes, user value of service outcomes and user success in locating needed materials. The survey questionnaire is the primary method of data collection. The results are based on data concerning 257 individual reference transactions from five academic libraries in Northern California. Major findings are that classes of variables related to feedback, service orientation, time constraints and task uncertainty have the most significant effects on service outcomes. Distinct but overlapping combinations of independent variables in these various classes explain more variance in librarian and user judgments of service value than in user success in locating needed materials. Findings also suggest that in the reference service desk setting, users expect to be provided with quick, concise information. The study also identifies user and reference librarian differences in perceptions for the following service outcomes: general quality of service, relevance of information and amount of information. For approximately 83 percent of the reference transactions, librarian judgments of service value are an adequate substitute for user service value judgments because librarian ratings on all aspects of service are identical to or lower than those of users. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-13022. AU WHITNEY, GRETCHEN. IN The University of Michigan Ph.D. 1988, 376 pages. TI THE LANGUAGE DISTRIBUTION OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORDS IN SELECTED ONLINE DATABASES. DE Library Science. Information Science. AB This study explores the language distribution of materials included in on-line bibliographic databases between 1970-84. Eight databases (BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts, GeoRef, MEDLINE, Criminal Justice, Oceanic Abstracts, PAIS, PsycInfo) on DIALOG were chosen for their world-wide coverage of literature in their respective fields. Trends are accounted for by examining database provider policies and practices. The data are compared with book and serial production statistics, to begin to assess the possible relationship between the databases and the actual availability of literature. The results describe the degree to which English has increased, decreased, or remained stable in relation to other languages, as reflected in the availability of bibliographic records in these databases. ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************