Search

The Library of Congress presents the history of its Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) system. Descriptions of MARC pilot projects and distribution services are followed by a discussion of several conversion projects undertaken by libraries in order to implement MARC. Then MARC's influence on standardization of formats for information interchange, bibliographic discription, content designators, and other activities is evaluated. The document concludes with a description of the use of MARC at the Library of Congress and by subscribers. Some 170 references and bibliographic citations dating from 1960 to 1974 are provided. (CH)

WISE is an on-line interactive information retrieval system designed particularly for bibliographic data bases, but it is potentially useful for any keyword-oriented data base. The WISE user searches a data base by entering and combining keywords that are appropriate to the data base and the subject area of interest. The user can also enter certain command statements to refine the results of the search and to control the generation of output. The WISE system has five absolute programs and two sets of subroutines for creating, updating, and searching a data base. This document deals with the subroutines and programs used to initially create and then update an on-line data base. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the WISE SEARCH program, FORTRAN V, FORTRAN subroutines, and simple EXEC-8 runstreams. (CH)

The goal of this project was to find ways of enhancing the efficiency of searching machine readable data bases. Ways are sought to transfer to the computer some of the tasks that are normally performed by the user, i.e., to further automate information retrieval. Four experiments were conducted to test the feasibility of a sequential processing hypothesis: a multi-step search process using Boolean search as the first step and subject term clustering as the second. The multi-step processing can be further strengthened by incorporating some semantic information into statistical string processing by the use of a new method of Automatic Term Classification (ATC). The results suggest an organization for information retrieval systems of the future in which several processing techniques are used during a single retrieval. Charts, tables, figures, and statistical data for the experiments are included. Appendices include all symbols used during the experiment; probability of term match formulas, computer programs used in the experiments; and sample mappings of selected words. The data bases used were selected files of Chemical Abstracts Services CACon and Engineering Index COMPENDEX. (Author/JPF)

This study describes and evaluates key bibliometric patterns in the articles published by the former "Journal of Education for Librarianship" (JEL) during its first 24 volumes of existence from 1960 to 1984. Data from each issue of JEL were collected and analyzed using a statistical analysis software package, SPSSx (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version X). Since becoming a refereed journal in 1971 (volume 12), JEL's scholarliness has increased dramatically--at least insofar as a quantitative indicator reveals. Before 1971, just more than half of all articles contained bibliographic citations. Since 1971, this proportion has grown steadily, and in the 1980s, 9 out of 10 articles were referenced. The number of citations per referenced article has also increased steadily, from 8 before refereeing to 17 in the 1980s. This article includes background information on the issue; a theoretical framework for studying bibliometric patterns; a review of the related literature; conceptual problems and definitions; explanation of data collection methods and procedures; study findings; and a summary and conclusions. Statistical comparisons, numerous data tables, codes, database exclusions, and project costs are appended. (Author/THC)

The citation study technique, known as bibliometrics, was undertaken in this study to evaluate scholarly exchange among the core journals in the field of communication. The journals studied were "Central States Speech Journal,""Communication Research,""Journal of Broadcasting,""Journal of Communication,""Journalism Quarterly,""Public Opinion Quarterly,""Quarterly Journal of Speech,""Human Communication Research," and "Communication Monographs." From the number of articles published each year from 1975 through 1979, the following measures were constructed: the number of articles published, the number of citations made, the number of citations made per article, and the ratio of citations received to citations made. Results indicated that (1) most citations were to other core communication publications, (2) despite an apparent trend toward theoretical integration in some areas of communication research, there remained a rather distinct grouping of interests, and (3) the "Public Opinion Quarterly" was the only journal that did not reciprocate citations with other communication publications. (HOD)

"Intermedia" is a hypermedia system which was developed for use in university research and teaching. It provides a framework for object-oriented, direct manipulation editors and applications, and the capability to link together materials created with those applications. Instructors are able to construct exploratory environments for their students as well as use applications for their day-to-day work, research, and writing. This paper provides a discussion of hypermedia systems in general, as well as a description of the Intermedia system which focuses on several important user features, and illustrates the operation of the system through a sample session. The text is supplemented by 15 figures. (19 references) (Author/EW)

An interactive, self-guided program for the joint post-processing of bibliographic citations from the federal information centers of the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is described. The program, presently installed on the Intelligent Gateway Processor of the Technology Information System (TIS/IGP) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is under evaluation by the TIS user community from remote terminals by telephone dial-up over TYMNET, and the ARPA computer network. Users are individually authorized for access to specific information centers, and use standard commands for the downloading, compilation, and online review of citations in a common format. Previously reported post-processing capabilities have been expanded, permitting: (1) online citation review, categorization, and addition of new data elements; (2) disassembly and re-assembly of citations; (3) statistical analysis of data field contents; (4) cross-correlation of data field contents; and (5) concordance generation. Additionally, the new two-pass interpreter for the post-processing program permits: the transformation of abbreviated data field names into English names preferred by each agency, the statistical analysis of the density and completeness of data fields in selected sets of bibliographic citations, the elimination of redundant citations, and trend analysis. References are included. (Author/THC)

Proposes an extended vector-processing scheme that extracts information from hypertext links to enhance retrieval effectiveness. Evaluates the impact of bibliographic references, bibliographic coupling, cocitation and document representative relationships. Shows that hypertext links do not always improve average precision, and interdocument relationships do not compensate for an appropriate choice of other retrieval features. (Author/AEF)

Describes the overall statistical properties of the citation network in science using a new data representation of the citation links within the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) database. Longitudinal coupling is introduced, which depends on documents which act both as cited and citing items, and bibliographic and cocitation coupling are discussed as navigation aids. (Author/LRW)

The effectiveness of using the age of references to control the exhaustivity of the reference representation in information retrieval was investigated through analysis of optimal cluster-based retrieval results. The results show that the foreground representation at its optimal level of exhaustivity is restricted to references with ages less than or equal to seven. (24 references) (KRN)

Argues that co-citation methods combine citing behavior of authors by assuming they share common view of scientific literature which affects assessments of dimensionality and clustering of articles. Co-citation matrices, effects of shared point-of-view assumption, and co-citation compared with bibliographic coupling and centroid scaling are discussed. Eighteen sources are given. (EJS)

A clustering experiment applied co-citation analysis to a cumulation (1972-1974) of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) tapes in order to outline a citation structure for the social and behavioral sciences. Co-citation analysis is a new technique that establishes a link between two older documents and a crude metric of the strength of that link, by counting the number of times the two documents are jointly cited in new documents. The major finding was that the analysis could cluster documents so that related works appeared together and could display relationships among documents and among clusters of documents which reflect scientific content. In contrast to the natural sciences, the social and behavioral sciences utilized older documents and placed greater emphasis on scholarly monographs, even in those areas most closely related to biological sciences, such as parts of experimental psychology. Generally, published work in the social and behavioral sciences seems to be heavily influenced by exceedingly small groups of researchers, who are represented often by quite old documents and who are not readily displaced by new research. These findings raise questions about the operation and function of the social and behavioral sciences. (LMM)

The major objective of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Computer Search Center (CSC) is to educate and link industry, academia, and government institutions to chemical and other scientific information systems and sources. The CSC is in full operation providing services to users from a variety of machine-readable data bases with minimal restrictions and a high degree of flexibility. A new modular machine-independent PL/1 software system was developed for handling virtually any bibliographic-type data base. CSC's transferable programs have run at fifteen different computer facilities with different: hardware computer models, versions of operating system, peripherals, and releases of the PL/1 compiler. All data bases are converted by a preprocessor to standard IIT Research Institute (IITRI) format which employs a directory and character string type of file structure and are searched by a software system that employs the novel IITRI-developed Least Common Bigram search screen technique. Part I of this two part study details: computer search center design and development; services; profile preparation and modification; software system; data bases--characteristics, statistics, and comparisons; use aids; user evaluation and feedback; education--user liaison; and center management and procedures. (Author/WCM)