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The Scholarly Process And The Nature Of The Information Needs Of The Literary Critic: A Descriptive Model, Clara M. Chu
The Scholarly Process And The Nature Of The Information Needs Of The Literary Critic: A Descriptive Model, Clara M. Chu
Digitized Theses
The research on the information needs and uses of humanists has produced descriptions of general information seeking behaviour patterns and characteristics of document use. The research efforts to explain the information seeking behaviour of humanists have been limited and are quite recent. As well, information scientists have made little effort to understand the nature of scholarship in the humanities.;In the present study, the information seeking and scholarly activities of one group of humanists, literary critics, were examined in order to develop a descriptive model of the literary critic's work and the functions served by information during each stage of the …
Impact Of The Ontario "Freedom Of Information And Protection Of Privacy Act 1987" Upon Affected Organizations, Margaret Ann Wilkinson
Impact Of The Ontario "Freedom Of Information And Protection Of Privacy Act 1987" Upon Affected Organizations, Margaret Ann Wilkinson
Digitized Theses
This exploratory research was designed to study the effect of an attempt to control the flow of information through the imposition of a statute, the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, 1987 (which came into effect in January of 1988). The hypotheses tested dealt with the effect of the statute in terms of (1) its implementation by the management of organizations on which it is imposed (including its effect on organization structure); (2) its adoption by the employees of those organizations; and (3) the impact on information flow within the organizations (both direction of flow and the …
Probabilistic Models Of Search State And Path Patterns In Hypertext Information Retrieval Systems, Liwen Qiu
Probabilistic Models Of Search State And Path Patterns In Hypertext Information Retrieval Systems, Liwen Qiu
Digitized Theses
The objective of this research is to discover the search state and path patterns through which users retrieve information in hypertext systems. The Markov model is used to describe users' search behaviour. As determined by the log-linear model test, the second-order Markov model is the best model. Search patterns of different user groups were studied by comparing the corresponding transition probability matrices. The comparisons were made based on the following factors: gender, search experience, search task, and the user's academic background. The statistical tests revealed that there were significant differences among all the groups being compared.;A three-way analysis of variance …
Influence Of Cost Consciousness And Heuristic Approach On Online Search Performance, Jill Austin
Influence Of Cost Consciousness And Heuristic Approach On Online Search Performance, Jill Austin
Digitized Theses
This research used an experimental approach to investigate the relationship between cost consciousness, heuristic approach and recall in online searching. It also investigated some of the characteristics of the searcher that would be expected to influence heuristic approach, including familiarity with the search topic, familiarity with the database and anxiety. A 2 x 2 factorial design was used, where the factors were experience (expert/novice) and presence or absence of a cost consciousness treatment. Forty subjects in all searched the same two search questions. A verbal protocol technique was used, whereby subjects verbalized their thoughts while conducting their searches. The verbalizations …
An Application Of Case Relations To Document Retrieval, Xin Lu
An Application Of Case Relations To Document Retrieval, Xin Lu
Digitized Theses
The purpose of this research is to design a document retrieval model which is a structural model based on case relations and to test how effectively a prototype of this model would perform retrieval on a test database. Case relations are a major component of case grammar proposed by linguistic theorists and developed in computational linguistics and natural language processing.;The design of the structural retrieval model involves case relations and structured document representation, case relation-based natural language parsing and automatic structural indexing, and tree mapping and structural matching. In this model, a document is represented by a set of tree-like …
Factors Underlying The Use Of Information Sources In Government Institutions In Nigeria, Mutawakilu Adisa Tiamiyu
Factors Underlying The Use Of Information Sources In Government Institutions In Nigeria, Mutawakilu Adisa Tiamiyu
Digitized Theses
The study examined the relationships between the use of information sources by civil servants and the characteristics of their work, the organizational environments within which they seek information, and the characteristics of the information sources.;The study was based on a survey of senior civil servants in eleven ministries in seven states of Nigeria. In addition, library managers in eight of the ministries were interviewed and published documents about the ministries were analyzed.;Analyses revealed that civil servants use more information sources for complex work activities than for less complex activities. Also, direct relationships were observed between the use of certain external …
The Application Of Informetrics To Information Retrieval Systems Design: A Simulation Study, Dietmar Wolfram
The Application Of Informetrics To Information Retrieval Systems Design: A Simulation Study, Dietmar Wolfram
Digitized Theses
The efficient design and maintenance of information retrieval systems are still important considerations, even with the current availability of faster computer hardware and cheaper secondary storage. Informetrics, the quantitative study of information and its use, could provide the systems designer and analyst with tools with which to aid in decision making for optimising system performance.;This study examines how informetrics can be used to help the systems designer in deciding what types of file structures would provide the best performance for a given type of information system environment. It is hypothesized that for varying index term distributions and system term usage …
A Probabilistic Model For The Distribution Of Authorships And A Measure Of The Degree Of Research Collaboration, Isola S. Ajiferuke
A Probabilistic Model For The Distribution Of Authorships And A Measure Of The Degree Of Research Collaboration, Isola S. Ajiferuke
Digitized Theses
The collaborative coefficient (CC), a measure that combines some of the merits of two earlier measures of research collaboration, is presented. This measure is used to compare the degrees of collaboration in the fields of engineering sciences, medical sciences, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. A theoretical model for the distribution of authorships is also developed. This model, the shifted Waring distribution, and 15 other discrete probability models are tested for goodness-of-fit against 96 data sets collected from the six fields listed above. The shifted inverse Gaussian-Poisson is found to be the best model. It is suggested that …
The Lotka Hypothesis And Bibliometric Methodology, Paul Travis Nicholls
The Lotka Hypothesis And Bibliometric Methodology, Paul Travis Nicholls
Digitized Theses
This study is an empirical examination of Lotka's law and the bibliometric methodology associated with it. A number of previous investigators have contributed to the empirical validation and generalization of Lotka's hypothesis; however, these studies are largely incomparable and inconclusive, owing to substantial differences in sampling, measurement, parameter estimation, testing, and even basic interpretation of the model. These data are subjected to a consistent secondary analysis here; newly collected data are also analysed, to expand the database of previous results. There are two main objectives in this study: First, to thoroughly and critically review the literature bearing on the statistical …
A Bibliometric Analysis Of Terminological And Conceptual Change In Sociology And Economics: With Application To The Design Of Dynamic Thesaural Systems (Volumes I And Ii), Lorna Katherine Rees-Potter
A Bibliometric Analysis Of Terminological And Conceptual Change In Sociology And Economics: With Application To The Design Of Dynamic Thesaural Systems (Volumes I And Ii), Lorna Katherine Rees-Potter
Digitized Theses
Thesauri have been used in the library and information science field to provide a standard descriptor Language for indexers or searchers to use in an information storage and retrieval system. One difficulty has been the maintenance and updating of thesauri considering that terms used to describe concepts in books and papers change over time and vary between users. This study investigated a mechanism by which thesauri can be updated and maintained using citation, co-citation analysis and citation context analysis. It has been demonstrated that citation analysis reflects concepts in a specialty, and reflects term use in a specialty, following the …
Case Grammar And Functional Relations In Aboutness Recognition And Relevance Decision-Making In The Bibliographic Retrieval Environment, Dee Ann Lewis
Case Grammar And Functional Relations In Aboutness Recognition And Relevance Decision-Making In The Bibliographic Retrieval Environment, Dee Ann Lewis
Digitized Theses
One of the most perplexing problems in Information Science has been definition of central concepts such as 'relevance' and 'information' at a theoretical level which incorporates and accounts for all known attributes of the concepts and the principles which underlie their particular application in this field. The objective of this thesis was to determine whether one definition of relevance, 'aboutness', can be based, at least in part, on textual characteristics of queries and abstracts. To this end, this study was conducted to determine to what extent a set of functional relations based on Fillmore's case grammar theory could be used …
Bibliographical Control In The Field Of Agriculture In Nigeria - A Study Of Demand And Availability, Georgiana Kiente Nwagha
Bibliographical Control In The Field Of Agriculture In Nigeria - A Study Of Demand And Availability, Georgiana Kiente Nwagha
Digitized Theses
A survey of eighteen Nigerian agricultural research institute libraries and the researchers using these libraries was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of the document delivery system in use. The original hypothesis--that fifty percent of demands for scientific documents made by agricultural research scientists in Nigeria are not satisfied--was found to be untenable. Survey data showed that in a majority of libraries, research scientists suppressed some of their demands. These suppressed demands frequently involved publications not stocked in the libraries. The high satisfaction ratios recorded by three quarters of the libraries did not reflect the true availability situation and was therefore …