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This study maps the intellectual structure of the field of Information Retrieval (IR) during the period of 1987-1997. Co-word analysis was employed to reveal patterns and trends in the IR field by measuring the association strengths of terms representative of relevant publications or other texts produced in IR. Results show that the IR field has some established research themes and it also changes rapidly to embrace new themes. (Author/AEF)

Discusses the need for Web information mentoring systems that help users track and monitor Web information based on users' interests. Describes a study that analyzed Web pages, Web site domains and change frequency for a Web monitoring system developed at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). (Author/LRW)

Examines whether the results obtained from a specific bibliographic search can be applied to a real search environment and enhance the level of utility of an information retrieval session for all levels of users. Focuses on a Web-based Bibliometric Information Retrieval System (BIRS), designed with facilities to assist users in getting a better understanding of their search queries and visualizing the bibliographic research results. (Contains 79 references.) (AEF)

Provides a review of 20 digital libraries from around the world. Examines library objectives; funding, including the role of government and private sector organizations; subject coverage; collections; information storage and retrieval; search features; access to the collections; output formats; and sorting search output. (LRW)

Analyzes the collaborative patterns of the information retrieval research field using co-authored articles retrieved from "Social Science Citation Index" for a period of 11 years, from 1987 to 1997. Results reveal an upward trend of collaborative research with interdisciplinary and intra-disciplinary scholarly communication. (Author/LRW)

Data integration and mediation have become central concerns of information technology over the past few decades. With the advent of the Web and the rapid increases in the amount of data and the number of Web documents and users, researchers have focused on enhancing the interoperability of data through the development of metadata schemes. Other researchers have looked to the wealth of metadata generated by bookmarking sites on the Social Web. While several existing ontologies have capitalized on the semantics of metadata created by tagging activities, the Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) emphasizes the structure of tagging activities to facilitate modeling of tagging data and the integration of data from different bookmarking sites as well as the alignment of tagging ontologies. UTO is described and its utility in modeling, harvesting, integrating, searching, and analyzing data is demonstrated with metadata harvested from three major social tagging systems (Delicious, Flickr, and YouTube). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organisation of knowledge for exploitation and re-use in the modern enterprise is often a most perplexing challenge. The entire knowledge management life-cycle (for example -- create, capture, organize, store, search, and transfer) is impacted by the organisation of intellectual capital into a corporate taxonomy or at the least a knowledge map (often incorrectly used interchangeably). Determining the extent to which such an objective is achieved is the focus of what is known as a knowledge audit. In this practice-oriented article, the authors review the fundamentals of creating a taxonomy, the use of meta-data in a necessary process known as classification and the role of expertise locators where the knowledge is not explicit but resides within experts in the form of tacit knowledge. The authors conclude with a framework for developing a corporate taxonomy and how such a project may be executed. The conceptual contribution of this article is the postulation that corporate taxonomies that are designed to facilitate knowledge audits lead to greater organizational impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the design, development and evaluation of a task-based digital library, the Digital Work Environment (DWE), for the academic community of higher education institutions (HEI) with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as a test case. Three different information organization approaches (alphabetical subject category and task-based) were used to organize the wide range of heterogeneous information resources that were interfaced to DWE. A user evaluation study using a series of task scenarios was carried out to gauge the effectiveness and usefulness of DWE and these information organization approaches. The time taken by respondents to identify and access the relevant information resources for individual tasks was also measured The findings show that the task-based approach took the least time in identifying information resources. Regression analysis of information resource location time with gender, age, computer experience and digital resource experience of the participants are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing enhanced access and added value to electronic documents (e-documents) will require interfaces that effectively mediate between the information seeking needs of the users and the information that the e-document has to offer. A proposed information environment (PIE) to support effective and creative use of e-documents to fulfil users' various information tasks and needs is presented. Providing a suite of novel features and interactive tools that can be flexibly combined, the PIE allows users to apply multiple novel ways to intuitively query and navigate information in an e-document. The querying and browsing processes in the PIE are supported by various interactive and visualisation techniques. Users work within a visually sovereign, integrated environment for information gathering and organising, based on navigable, fractional information objects that are also affiliated with rich metadata and additional layers of value-adding information. This paper describes the conceptual design of the PIE and uses a representative scenario to show how the PIE is likely to be used for interacting with electronic journals (e-journals) and the ability of the proposed environment to provide enhanced user interaction and value-adding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]