Thesis (M. Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 52 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 50-52).

Thesis--Air University. / "Project no.7381. Task no.738103." "AD 606-192."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-272).

Hazard assessment involves the retrieval of appropriate chemical hazard data and the production of an assessment which complies with relevant regulations. This is a complex process requiring detailed knowledge of chemical hazards and hazard assessment regulations. The purpose of this project is to investigate the use of an expert system approach for hazard assessment of complex systems. The approach has focused on the design, development and evaluation of an expert hazard assessor after appropriate modelling of chemical database retrieval, and legislative knowledge base. An "intelligent form" was designed to link the legislation to the chemical hazard data. To facilitate ease of use, the program was extended to include an on-line help facility, and a user friendly interface to address local and remote databases. The feasibility and benefits of the Expert Hazard Assessor ( EHA ) have been demonstrated through system testing and evaluation using sample regulations, and available chemical data, by groups of inexperienced users. Comparison with a previous standard expert system, also shows the EHA to be more comprehensive in output, more efficient, easier to use for the non-expert assessor, and provides better help support. The results suggest that an EHA such as the one detailed in this work is of significant benefit in providing appropriate hazard assessment.

This WINISIS Training Manual in Hindi language contains three self-learning modules: WINISIS â A Practical Guide; Creating Web Interface for CDS/ISIS Databases using GenisisWeb; and Publishing CDS/ISIS Databases on CD-ROM using GenisisCD. These self-learning modules are the outcome of the Advanced Workshop on CDS-ISIS for Windows, held at the Thapar University on 14-18 May 2007. The Training Manual covers all aspects of WINISIS: installation of software, creation of the database, database operations, customization of search interfaces and display formatting language. Advanced features, such as hyper-linking, web interfacing, full-text document processing and automation of libraries, are also present in this document. Target audience of this Manual is library professionals working in academic, special and public libraries as well as students of library science courses. The Manual will also be helpful to small organizations, which are building digital archives in local library setup or on CD-ROMs. After practicing the laboratory exercises given in the Manual, the learners will be able to install WINISIS software and its web application tools GENISIS; create and manage bibliographic or full-text databases. This Manual is particularly useful in the South Asian region, where availability of training material in local languages is crucial for providing public information services with the help of free and open source software (FOSS).

The article describes the research done over a bibliographic database in order to show the impact the specificity of the knowledge organising tools may have on information retrieval. For this purpose two multilingual UDC-based thesauri having different degrees of specificity are considered. Issues of harmonising a classificatory structure with a thesaurus structure are introduced and significant aspects of information retrieval in a multilingual environment are argued in an extensive manner. Aspects of complementarity are discussed with particular emphasis on the real impact produced by alternative search facilities on IR. Finally a number of conclusions are formulated as they arise from the study.

The Internet constitutes a vast universe of knowledge and human culture, allowing the dissemination of ideas and information without borders. The Web also became an important media for the diffusion of multilingual resources. However, linguistic differences still form a major obstacle to scientific, cultural, and educational exchange. With the ever increasing size of the Web and the availability of more and more documents in various languages, this problem becomes all the more pervasive. Besides this linguistic diversity, a multitude of databases and collections now contain documents in various formats, which may also adversely affect the retrieval process. This paper presents the context, the problem statement, and the experiment carried out of a research project aiming to verify the existing relations between two different indexing approaches: (1) traditional image indexing recommending the use of controlled vocabularies or (2) free image indexing using uncontrolled vocabulary, and their respective performance for image retrieval, in a multilingual context. The use of controlled vocabularies or uncontrolled vocabularies raises a certain number of difficulties for the indexing process. These difficulties will necessarily entail consequences at the time of image retrieval. Indexing with controlled or uncontrolled vocabularies is a question extensively discussed in the literature. However, it is clear that many searchers recognize the advantages of either form of vocabulary according to circumstances (Arsenault, 2006). It appears that the many difficulties associated with free indexing using uncontrolled vocabularies can only be understood via a comparative analysis with controlled vocabulary indexing (Macgregor & McCulloch, 2006). This research compares image retrieval within two contexts: a monolingual context where the language of the query is the same as the indexing language; and a multilingual context where the language of the query is different from the indexing language. This research will indicate if one of these indexing approaches surpasses the other, in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of the image searchers. For this research, three data collection methods are used: (1) the analysis of the vocabularies used for image indexing in order to examine the multiplicity of term types applied to images (generic description, identification, and interpretation) and the degree of indexing difficulty due to the subject and the nature of the image; (2) the simulation of the retrieval process with a subset of images indexed according to each indexing approach studied, and finally, (3) the administration of a questionnaire to gather information on searcher satisfaction during and after the retrieval process. The quantification of the retrieval performance of each indexing approach is based on the usability measures recommended by the standard ISO 9241-11, i.e. effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of the user (AFNOR, 1998). The need to retrieve a particular image from a collection is shared by several user communities including teachers, artists, journalists, scientists, historians, filmmakers and librarians, all over the world. Image collections also have many areas of application: commercial, scientific, educational, and cultural. Until recently, image collections were difficult to access due to limitations in dissemination and duplication procedures. This research underlines the pressing necessity to optimize the methods used for image processing, in order to facilitate the imagesâ retrieval and their dissemination in multilingual environments. The results of this study will offer preliminary information to deepen our understanding of the influence of the vocabulary used in image indexing. In turn, these results can be used to enhance access to digital collections of visual material in multilingual environments.

In this paper, we show how Semantic Web techniques can help to solve semantic interoperability issues in the cultural heritage domain. In particular, these techniques can enable integrated access to heterogeneous collections by representing their controlled description vocabularies (e.g. thesauri) in a standardized format â Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). We also present existing automatic alignment procedures that can assist cultural heritage practitioners to connect such vocabularies at the semantic level, building similarity links between the concepts they contain.

While being theoretically so widely available, information can be restricted from a more general use by linguistic barriers. The linguistic aspects of the information languages and particularly the chances of an enhanced access to information by means of multilingual access facilities will make the substance of this thesis. The main problem of this research is thus to demonstrate that information retrieval can be improved by using multilingual thesaurus terms based on an intermediate or switching language to search with. Universal classification systems in general can play the role of switching languages for reasons dealt with in the forthcoming pages. The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) in particular is the classification system used as example of a switching language for our objectives. The question may arise: why a universal classification system and not another thesaurus? Because the UDC like most of the classification systems uses symbols therefore, it is language independent and the problems of compatibility between such a thesaurus and different other thesauri in different languages are avoided. Another question may still arise? Why not then, assign running numbers to the descriptors in a thesaurus and make a switching language out of the resulting enumerative system? Because of some other characteristics of the UDC: hierarchical structure and terminological richness, consistency and control. One big problem to find an answer to is: can a thesaurus be made having as a basis a classification system in any and all its parts? To what extent this question can be given an affirmative answer? This depends much on the attributes of the universal classification system which can be favourably used to this purpose. Examples of different situations will be given and discussed upon beginning with those classes of UDC which are best fitted for building a thesaurus structure out of them (classes which are both hierarchical and faceted)...