Volume 51, Issue 2

The amount of electronic information in Arabic and other non-English languages available, especially on the World Wide Web, is increasing. Searches for such information can be undertaken on engines developed with the English language in mind, but will these engines work as effectively in other languages? This article investigates the impact on retrieval of prefixes in Arabic, which are far more common than in English. Typically search engines such as AltaVista designed implicitly for English include right hand (suffix) but not left hand (prefix) truncation. A test collection of 271 Arabic HTML records was created and indexed using the personal version of AltaVista. A series of searches was conducted on this collection, again using AltaVista. The results showed that searches on nouns stripped of prefixes reduced recall, in some cases dramatically, and that total recall of nouns can only be guaranteed by repeating searches that include the various prefixed versions of the nouns. The research questions the assumption that search engines designed with English in mind will work as well with different language structures.

Library online public access catalogues (OPACs) are automated information retrieval systems that constitute the most readily available source of information for non-professional users. Web-based OPACs represent a huge step forward in the development of user interfaces for catalogues. The present study evaluates Latin American OPACs against a checklist for full bibliographic display in web-based OPACs, developed at the University of Toronto. The checklist contains four sections that cover the most important facets of the OPAC: 1) labels, 2) text, 3) instructional information, and 4) page layout. Finally, multivariate analysis methods are applied to the results. Such techniques include 1) cluster analysis, 2) principal components analysis (PCA), and 3) multidimensional scaling (MDS).

This study examines metadata as a means to enhance information retrieval in a suite of seven search engines, AltaVista, Excite, Google, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, and Northern Light. Papers were selected from issues of the Internet-only journal First Monday , and examined by portions of author and title in seven search engines, without metadata. Metatags were then added to these papers and the searches were repeated five months later. Metadata alone did not play a significant role in increasing the likelihood of a given paper being indexed or highly ranked by any specific search engine.

329 patients in a multi-cultural surgery in Nottinghamshire, England used a touch-screen health information kiosk in the practice and then filled in an online questionnaire after they had searched the system. This questionnaire sought background information on the patient's age, gender, country of birth and employment status as well as data on the use and usefulness of the kiosk. Ease of kiosk system use was found to be significant in determining both use and satisfaction variables. Older users and those not born in the UK were less likely to find the system easy or very easy to use. Employment status was also found to impact on kiosk use; both UK born and non-UK born skilled workers were found to use the kiosk more as compared to other groups. These findings help identify user populations who are good targets for information kiosks as well as the most effective ways to provide consumer health information via kiosk.

The information profession has changed drastically in the last few years. The core requirements for information workers have also changed because the workplace needs specific qualities and skills. The necessity of continuing to teach cataloguing and classification is questioned, and many library schools have discontinued teaching these subjects. Many experts, however, believe that cataloguing and classification are still among the basics of information work. The subject still forms part of the curriculum at the University of Pretoria. At the beginning of 2000, funds were obtained to use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to establish the preferences of the second year Library Science students taking cataloguing. The result showed that their preferences do not really correspond to those of cataloguers. They specifically do not like the analysing and mastering the technical details required in cataloguing. As these skills are required for cataloguing, teaching methods will have to be adapted to equip students for the workplace.

Previous studies of author productivity and collaboration have established that productive, active and prolific authors, especially in the field of science, are also highly collaborative. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the most productive authors in the literature of technology, for the three-year period 1993–1995, are also the most collaborative. The study used the weighted-average method to determine the extent of author collaboration and the Spearman rank correlation coefficient was employed to determine the correlation between productivity and collaboration. The study however, found that while the degree of collaboration in the literature of technology was very low, the productive authors correlated positively with the collaborative authors in the field.