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The MEDLARS system consists of a large file of indexed references with facilities for retrieving all references indexed by a specified combination of index terms. Were the file small the retrieval performance of the system could be evaluated by asking a number of system users to inspect the entire file arid to compare the references they selected as relevant to their needs with the reference by a MEDLARS search. Since the file is large this is not possible. MEDLARS performance is therefore evaluated by measuring the change in the user's literature awareness induced by the system, and by comparing the standard system with three alternative retrieval techniques.

The problem of mechanically retrieving references to documents, as a first step to fulfilling the information need of a researcher, is tackled through the design of an interactive computer program. A view of reference retriev- al is presented which embraces the browsing activity. In fact, browsing is considered important and regarded as ubiquitous. Thus, for successful retrieval (in many circum- stances), a device which permits conversation is needed. Approaches to automatic (delegated) retrieval are surveyed, as are on-line systems which support interaction. This type of interaction usually consists of iteration, under the user's control, in the query formulation process. A program has been constructed to tryout another approach to man-machine dialogue in this field. The machine builds a model of the user's interest, and chooses refer- ences for display according to its current state. The model is expressed in terms of the program's knowledge of the network of references ans literature of the field, namely a associated subject descriptors, authors and any other entity of potential interest. The user need not formulate a query - the model varies as a consequence of his reactions to references shown to him. The model can be regarded as a binary classification induced by the user's messages. The program has been used experimentally with a small collection of references and the structured vocabulary from the kedlars system. A brief account of the program design methodology is also given.

In the face of rapidly increasing technological changes to the educational and information environment, the academic library has continued to play a significant role as a social organisation in support of knowledge creation and research within the higher education system. Academic libraries are thus expected to comply with rapid global developments in education through efficient delivery of services in order to contribute to the growth of the institution it serves. In Nigeria, quality management models have been identified as the appropriate management structures that can provide libraries with the necessary techniques to improve their value through efficient services to their user communities. Even though a few studies have identified the benefits of quality management adoption and implementation in higher education institutions (HEIs), there are no studies reporting on quality management adoption and implementation in Nigerian university libraries. A sequential mixed methods approach was used to explore quality management practices in academic libraries in south-western (SW) Nigeria in a two-phased study in which the second phase was dominant. The choice of the approach was because it was found appropriate for answering the research questions of the study. The approach afforded the opportunity of gaining a better insight into the investigation, with the two methods complementing each other as opposed to a single method. The first (quantitative) phase involved an exploratory online survey which was conducted to assess management practices and quality service delivery in 24 university libraries studied. The study found a wide range of views on management practices and service delivery. The findings suggest that the respondents were aware of QM practices, service delivery and its impact on the mission and vision, learning outcomes, employee satisfaction, staff development and performance. They were therefore able to give informed views on the issues being investigated in the study. It was also revealed that despite the fact that participating universities fell into different categories, the majority of the university librarians agreed on the need for QM practices as a means of improving academic library services. In the second phase, semi-structured, in depth interviews with 15 heads of libraries and 10 focus group discussions with non-management staffs (73) of the libraries were conducted to build on and confirm the findings from the quantitative phase of study. The study found that the application of QM principles in the university libraries was not in line with any best practice to shape QM and as such could not lead to consistent QM implementation. The study found that most of the university libraries adhered to the external quality assurance system prescribed by the National Universities Commission (NUC) for the university for the purpose of accreditation of academic programmes. There were no quality management tools in place for use in Nigerian university libraries, but rather libraries employed the principles to guide their procedures without any systematic procedures. A QM maturity assessment was conducted to ascertain the positioning of the libraries in QM practices. The findings from analysis of data from the survey, interviews and focus groups are discussed in relation to the key objectives of the study, explaining the key observations and findings. The findings were also triangulated for a better understanding of the situation of libraries investigated, while factors perceived as vital to the actualisation of QM were also highlighted. An exploratory model of QM implementation programme for university libraries is proposed which seeks government intervention in formulating and implementing effective quality improvement in university library operations. A maturity model to help in post-implementation assessment of QM maturity levels of libraries is also developed. This study makes a contribution to knowledge by developing an empirically supported model that seeks the intervention of major stakeholders in the HEIs for QM implementation in university libraries. The model acknowledges the roles of both internal and external actors of the library in actualisation of a library quality improvement programme. Though the model was developed on the basis of evidence gathered from libraries in SW Nigeria, it may be transferable to other university libraries in other zones in Nigeria and possibly within the West African region. Furthermore, this thesis presents the contributions and limitations of the study and suggests areas of future research.

The operation of the BBC Film Library was studied with the intention of defining those areas likely to benefit from computerization. The state of the art of computerized information retrieval was assessed by means of the literature, and those techniques likely to be of use at the Film Library were isolated. Computer programs were written to provide an information storage and retrieval system paralleling the manual system currently used at the Film Library, organized according to the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC). These programs were operated by the film librarians in situ. A computerized system able to "learn" from enquiries was built and tested, and document clustering was also investigated as a method of subject classification. A modular approach to retrieval system design was developed within the framework of a Relational Database system, so that the various retrieval methods examined in the course of the study could be cemented into one concertive retrieval system.

Information need and use literature relating to nurses has tended to treat them as a homogeneous group without distinguishing their role or contribution to service delivery. Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNSs) operate across the whole range of nursing specialisms and their role includes advanced clinical care, education, research, consultation and facilitation of change. They are relatively autonomous in their practice and are able to exert considerable influence on nursing activities. The purpose of this research is to examine the advanced practice role, the social and organisational frameworks within which CNSs operate and the inter-relationship of these with information use.

As recently as two decades ago, online journal publishing becomes an integral part of academic activity in educational institutions and research organizations across the globe. In Malaysia, this is a new development and still in its early stage. In the global race to publish research results in online journals, local researchers are reluctant participants. This research looks into the factors that influence the adoption of online journal among Malaysian researchers.

The purpose of this research was to evaluate user interaction with learning object metadata surrogates both in terms of content and presentation. The main objectives of this study were: (1) to review the literature on learning object metadata and user-centred evaluation of metadata surrogates in the context of cognitive information retrieval (including user-centred relevance and usability research); (2) to develop a framework for the evaluation of user interaction with learning object metadata surrogates in search result interfaces; (3) to investigate the usability of metadata surrogates in search result interfaces of learning object repositories (LORs) in terms of various presentation aspects (such as amount of information, structure and highlighting of query terms) as a means for facilitating the user relevance judgment process; (4) to investigate in-depth the type of content that should be included in learning object metadata surrogates in order to facilitate the process of relevance judgment; (5) to provide a set of recommendations—guidelines for the design of learning object metadata surrogates in search result interfaces both in terms of content and presentation.

This project investigated the design and implementation of a knowledge-based system for thematic and spatial access to information about archaeological artefacts. The project explored the use of an integrated spatial and thematic ontology to address many problems related to the search and retrieval of archaeological information. One common problem is the frequent mismatch between the terminology employed by users to access the information, and that used by developers to index it. Systems may lack the capability to process queries with loose information demand, since they are unable to imprecisely match query terms. Another challenging area is that of handling the spatial information associated with archaeological artefacts. Places normally have different version of names, often change in size, boundaries, and centroid coordinates. Generating appropriate spatial footprints to adequately represent their extents and infer their spatial relationships forms another challenging area. Several methods and approaches were investigated in this project to overcome the above problems. The ontology was designed to handle different versions of place names and ease the terminology problem by controlling vocabulary using integrated spatial and thematic thesauri. Semantic distance measures were employed to imprecisely match query terms, providing ranked lists of similar objects. A thematic measure was developed based on semantic-path traversals to expand artefact types. The project explored some of the main issues affecting the use of associative thesaurus relationships in query expansion. One approach found useful was to specialise these relationships and select which ones to activate based on the query context. The spatial domain in the ontology was constructed from a geographical thesaurus, enriched with spatial relationships. Spatial distance measures were used to provide more flexible retrieval for queries with spatial content. The two main spatial measures developed in this project were based on some of the common spatial information provided by most gazetteers, such as centroid coordinates and administrative hierarchies. Place co-ordinates were used to measure similarity of places according to Euclidean distances, while the hierarchical associations of places were useful to measure place similarity when administrative divisions are important or when co-ordinates are not available. A dynamic spatial approximation method was developed that uses sparse spatial information to generate approximated boundaries, and can be employed to infer topological, proximity, and directional information.

Current systems do not provide a context when sharing and reusing annotations. This research investigated how this may be achieved. This thesis provides an overview of the work that has been undertaken in the fields of Semantic Web, adaptive hypermedia system, and open hypermedia. This work discusses experiments that were conducted to assess the benefit of integrating Semantic Web technologies with open hypermedia and adaptive hypermedia concepts to provide adaptable hypermedia for users’ requirements. In this work, ontologies are used to explicitly define models, concepts, user profiles, context and semantic relationships. To enable sharing and reusability of information chunks as annotations, this research brings together several technologies: ontologies for knowledge representation, and extended FOHM to represent the structure of annotations. A contextual annotation framework (CAF) using an ontology-based contextual annotation service is proposed. The novel contribution of this work is introducing the CAF using an ontology-based contextual annotation service by building on open hypertext and the Semantic Web. The a-PIE is prototyped to provide a system for supporting browsing, reading, annotating hypertext, and manipulating interesting annotations in a personal repository. The framework has been applied to the specific domain of web development, in order to carry out a focused evaluation. The results indicate that the framework is valid.