The study presents the findings of a sample survey carried out using two sub-sample populations (Rural Communities and Information providers). The main objective of the study is to explore the Community Information Needs of rural communities in Sri Lanka and their information behaviour. Fifteen categories of basic information needs of two types (â survivalâ and â strategicâ ) were identified. The nature of community information is recognized as non-bibliographic and service-oriented. The information supply position was identified as stagnated at service points, and the dynamism of the information has deteriorated within the delivery mechanisms limited to system structure. It was possible to calculate a Channel Dependency Rate (CDR) which showed that channels appropriate to provide certain categories of information were not strong and or operating as they should be. Rural citizens were also found to encounter a range of difficulties in accessing information, and it was found that these were related to geographical, structural (socio-economic and cultural) factors and personal reasons. The study proposes Community Information Centres using e-governance strategy with One Stop Shop (OSS) model, to be established at the village level using prevailing infrastructure to bridge the information gap existing in the rural areas of Sri Lanka.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / This article presents a knowledge-based approach to the design of document-based retrieval systems. We conducted two empirical studies investigating the users' behavior using an online catalog. The studies revcaled a range of knowledge elements which are necessary for performing a successful search. We proposed a semantic network based representation to capture these knowledge elements. The findings we derived from our empirical studies were used to construct a knowledge-based retrieval system. We performed a laboratory experiment to calculate the search performance of our system. The experiment showed that our system out-performed a conventional retrieval system in recall and user satisfaction. The implications of our study to the design of document-based retrieval systems are also discussed in this article.

acase@tulane.edu / Research has demonstrated that high levels of teacher turnover are correlated with poorer student outcomes, including lower levels of educational quality, poorer academic outcomes, greater difficulties with emotion regulation, and greater externalizing behaviors. However, the research on teacher turnover in early childhood educational settings is limited. Furthermore, the conceptualization of teacher turnover in preschool settings has been fairly limited, not typically including alternative types of teacher-child relationship disruptions, such as teachers moving to another classroom within the same preschool. The current study added to the area of early childhood research by longitudinally examining the relationship between teacher ratings of work environment, teacher turnover, and preschool externalizing behaviors in a sample of low-income preschoolers (N = 2172) and their teachers (N = 126). Results indicated relatively low levels of teacher turnover in the current sample (5 %). This is likely explained by teacher demographics (e.g., education and years teaching), school factors (e.g., positive work environments), and preschooler behavior (e.g., low levels of externalizing behaviors). These findings suggest that future research should examine ways to manipulate teaching environments and increase supports for teachers in preschool settings in an effort to increase teachers’ decisions to remain in the teaching profession and thus positively impact preschooler functioning. / 1 / Corey Black

It is clear that the US federal government is concerned about the country's teen pregnancy rates and would like to see changes. Without a precise understanding of the factors associated with adolescent pregnancy, and specifically with Hispanic female adolescent pregnancy, monies allocated to prevention programs could go to waste. The focus of this study was to systematically review the current literature as it relates to factors, in this case attitudes, beliefs and practices that influence Hispanic female adolescents' reproductive behaviors. This study consisted of systematically reviewing published studies, through a process of abstracting and organizing their findings into a matrix. Three electronic databases were searched: MEDLINE, ERIC, and CINAHL. The initial search yielded a total of 494 publications. After applying specific inclusion criteria, the final sample of publications included forty-nine (n=49). Publications were categorized as primarily quantitative or primarily qualitative studies. Methodological characteristics of each study were judged using an overall methodological quality score (MQS) assigned to each study. Different MQS criteria were developed for qualitative and quantitative studies. A total of 205 findings were abstracted from the 49 included reports. Beliefs that were identified consistently among the studies were norms and values associated with condom use, partner's beliefs, hedonistic beliefs, and communicative beliefs. Norms and values were also seen as important when adolescents chose to remain abstinent. Findings that were unique the Hispanic adolescent population were identified as well with cultural factors showing significant associations. Regarding methodological quality, fewer than 50% of studies included a theoretical framework and only 11 included Hispanic-only samples. Qualitative studies had similar findings to those of the quantitative studies, but also introduced new factors associated with reproductive behaviors. Acculturation constructs were seen among the qualitative studies as being positively associated to sexual abstinence. Other behaviors such as partner's manipulation of birth control and the use of female condoms were unique to the qualitative studies done in this review. This review provided a critical assessment of the literature and it methodological qualities. Findings should be interpreted with caution due to limitations. Concentrating on unique factors associated with the Hispanic population can lead to interventions that are culturally sensitive to this population and effective. Health professionals should focus on conducting more studies with exclusively Hispanic samples and use factors unique to the Hispanic population when planning health education programs that are culturally sensitivity to Hispanic female adolescents' needs and world-views.

The communion between human is frequent in modern society, and mass media has become an important tool for people to obtain information about life and experience of the outside world as a result. TV is the medium that has the largest size, is the most common and the most contacted by people around the globe, and also has the largest influences on modern people. However, with the innovation of spreading technology, the Internet has become the second largest medium industry that is next to TV due to such features as two-way spreading, real time interaction, low cost and free selection etc. Both TV and the Internet are ranged side by side as the two great powerful medium nowadays, they are both capable of spreading words, graphics, sound, images and video data, leaving profound influences on the audience, but the two vary greatly in terms of their showed appearances and usage nature. This research is based on the theory of Belk situation, locks the audience¡¦s watching/ usage behaviors in a certain special time space; a questionnaire survey has been conducted on those audience who have the habit of watching TV and using the Internet in the three areas covering Pingtung, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the purpose of the survey is to explore the watching/usage ¡¥situation¡¦ and ¡¥behaviors¡¦ of those audience who watch TV and use the Internet and make contrast for the differences between the two groups; the main conclusions come after statistics and analysis as follows: I. The differences of watching/usage situations between TV and the Internet 1. Those audience who watch TV have their home as the main environment, while the Internet users have comparably more diversified network environment. 2. The social interactive capability of the Internet is better than that of TV; TV is the main interactive media with family members, while the Internet is the main interactive media with non family members. 3. The later the time interval is, the higher ratio of watching TV of the audience will be; the main time interval for using the Internet is in the morning and evening respectively. Furthermore, the interactive lasting time of using the Internet is longer than that of watching TV and so as the addiction. 4. Due to its own features different from that of the Internet, TV can guide the audience¡¦s purpose of behaviors. 5. Through the contact with the media, the audience can maintain various satisfaction levels in daily life at a certain stable one; watching TV can increase people¡¦s pleasure level and the mood is just so-so for most users of the Internet. II. Under different situations, the behavior differences between the audience of watching TV and using the Internet 1. In case the physical environment is different, the audience¡¦s watching/usage behaviors are varied in terms of purpose, time interval and the relation with the interactive objects. 2. In case the social life environment is different, and when the interactive objects of the audience are not family members, the time interval of starting using for their watching/usage behaviors become varied is in the morning. 3. In case the time structural surface is different, the time interval of starting using for their watching/usage behaviors become varied is in the morning, at the end of usage and become varied for the watching/using hours. 4. In case the task definition is different, the audience¡¦s watching/usage behaviors are varied in terms of ¡¥ceremonial usage¡¦ purpose and ¡¥tool usage¡¦ purpose. 5. In case the previous status is different, the two groups of audience have obvious relevant features for the physiology of watching/usage behaviors, and the influence from the Internet is higher than that from TV.

This study investigates the use of criteria to assess relevant, partially relevant and not relevant documents. Each study participant identified passages within 20 document representations that were used in making relevance judgments, judged each document representation as a whole to be relevant, partially relevant or not relevant to their information need, and explained their decisions in an interview. Analysis revealed 29 criteria, discussed positively and negatively, used by the participants when selecting passages that contributed or detracted from a document's relevance. These criteria can be grouped into 6 categories: author, abstract, content, full text, journal or publisher and personal. Results indicate that multiple criteria are used when making relevant, partially relevant and not relevant judgments. Additionally, most criteria can have both a positive or negative contribution to the relevance of a document. The criteria most frequently mentioned by study participants in this study was content, followed by criteria concerning the full text document. These findings may have implications for relevance feedback in information retrieval systems, suggesting that users give relevance feedback using multiple criteria and indicate positive and negative criteria contributions. Systems designers may want to focus on supporting content criteria followed by full text criteria as this may provide the greatest cost benefit.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / This paper presents a framework for knowledge discovery and concept exploration. In order to enhance the concept exploration capability of knowledge-based systems and to alleviate the limitations of the manual browsing approach, we have developed two spreading activation-based algorithms for concept exploration in large, heterogeneous networks of concepts (e.g., multiple thesauri). One algorithm, which is based on the symbolic Al paradigm, performs a conventional branch-and-bound search on a semantic net representation to identify other highly relevant concepts (a serial, optimal search process). The second algorithm, which is based on the neural network approach, executes the Hopfield net parallel relaxation and convergence process to identify â convergentâ concepts for some initial queries (a parallel, heuristic search process). Both algorithms can be adopted for automatic, multiple-thesauri consultation. We tested these two algorithms on a large text-based knowledge network of about 13,000 nodes (terms) and 80,000 directed links in the area of computing technologies. This knowledge network was created from two external thesauri and one automatically generated thesaurus. We conducted experiments to compare the behaviors and performances of the two algorithms with the hypertext-like browsing process. Our experiment revealed that manual browsing achieved higher-term recall but lower-term precision in comparison to the algorithmic systems. However, it was also a much more laborious and cognitively demanding process. In document retrieval, there were no statistically significant differences in document recall and precision between the algorithms and the manual browsing process. In light of the effort required by the manual browsing process, our proposed algorithmic approach presents a viable option for efficiently traversing largescale, multiple thesauri (knowledge network).

Poster paper / The services that are provided in a library are at various levels and varieties. Library automation services such as computerized OPAC, e-mail based reference service etc., are be-ing provided. Also, Web based services like Web Opac, E-Journals, CD-ROM Collection search, Bibliographical database services such as Engineering village 2, Compendex, Chemi-cal Abstract, Web of science, are being provided.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / The problems of information overload and vocabulary differences have become more pressing with the emergence of the increasingly popular Internet services. The main information retrieval mechanisms provided by the prevailing Internet WWW software are based on either keyword search or hypertext browsing. Keyword search often results in low precision, poor recall, and slow response time due to the limitations of indexing and communication methods, controlled language based interfaces, and the inability of searchers themselves to articulate their needs fully. Hypertext browsing, on the other hand, allows users to explore only a very small portion of a large Internet information space. A large information space can also potentially confuse and disorient its user and it can cause the user to spend a great deal of time while learning nothing specific. This research aims to provide concept-based categorization and search capabilities for Internet WWW servers based on selected machine learning and parallel computing techniques. Our proposed approach, which is grounded on automatic textual analysis of Internet documents, attempts to address the Internet search problem by first categorizing the content of Internet documents and subsequently providing semantic search capabilities based on a concept space approach. As a first step, we propose a multi-layered neural network clustering algorithm employing the Kohonen self-organizing feature map to categorize the Internet homepages according to their content. The category hierarchies created could serve to partition the vast Internet services into subject-specific categories and databases. After individual subject categories have been created, we propose to generate domain-specific concept spaces for each subject category. The concept spaces can then be used to support concept-based information retrieval, a significant improvement over the existing keyword searching and hypertext browsing options for Internet resource discovery. As Internet information space continues to grow at the present pace, we believe this research would shed light on potentially robust and scalable solutions to the increasingly complex and urgent information access and sharing problems that are certain to emerge in the future Internet society.

The information on this page will help you to understand the basic concepts involved in searching for documents on GPO Access. It contains general instructions, covering topics such as how to construct a query and how to interpret a results list. For specific instructions on how to use a particular database, as well as sample searches, please consult the Search Tips for that database. Search Tips are available from the main search page for each database and from the GPO Access Databases page.