Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-119). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-108).

Thesis (M.S.) in Spatial Information Science and Engineering--University of Maine, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-92).

Univ., Diss.--Leuven, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [237] - 260) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Duke University, 2007.

by Richard C. Lufkin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 12). / Thesis (B. S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 1968. / Supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Advanced Research Projects Agency under Research Grant, NSFC-472 (Part) as part of Project Intrex. M.I.T. Project DSR. 70054.

Acompanha: Biblioteca Digital de Qualidade de Vida / Este trabalho teve por objetivo construir uma biblioteca digital especializada voltada para a disseminação de informações e conhecimentos sobre o tema Qualidade de Vida. Para que este fosse alcançado, estruturou-se um referencial teórico embasado nas temáticas: informação, biblioteca digital, internet e a Lei de Direitos Autorais. Em termos estruturais, a Biblioteca Digital de Qualidade de Vida (BDQV) foi construída com base no banco de dados do indexador de periódicos GeoDados, do qual utiliza um sistema em linguagem MySQL para o gerenciamento de seu banco de informações, apoiado pela ferramenta phpMyAdmin. Ainda, a criação da interface de trabalho, como também dos sistemas de busca e recuperação de material da BDQV, foram construídos com o auxílio de ferramentas como o phpEditor, em linguagens PHP, HTML e CSS, tornando possível a consulta online dos materiais anexados de maneira fácil e ágil. A biblioteca foi testada em duas etapas, sendo que a primeira tratou da realização de um pré-teste, com o objetivo da detecção de possíveis problemas e a coleta de sugestões de melhoria. A segunda etapa tratou do teste final de usabilidade da BDQV, que teve por objetivo a validação desta como ferramenta de apoio ao ensino da temática qualidade de vida. Com a BDQV construída e testada, foi possível então perceber sua considerável aplicabilidade no apoio ao ensino-aprendizagem da temática Qualidade de Vida, nesta disciplina. / This study aimed to build a digital library specialist dedicated to the dissemination of information and knowledge of the theme of Quality of Life. For this to be achieved, if a structured theoretical framework was based on the themes addressed: information, digital library, and Internet Copyright Act. In structural terms, the Digital Library Quality of Life (DLQL) was built on the index database of journals Geodis, which uses a MySQL language system for managing your database information, supported by the tool phpMyAdmin. Still, the creation of the working interface, as well as systems for search and retrieval of material from DLQL were built with the help of tools like phpEditor in languages PHP, HTML and CSS, making it possible to search online for materials attached easily and quickly. The library was tested in two stages, where the first dealt with the completion of a pre-test, with the aim of detecting possible problems and collect suggestions for improvement. The second step this was the ultimate test of usability DLQL, which aimed at the validation of the library as a tool to support teaching of thematic quality of life. With DLQL built and tested, it was possible then realize its considerable applicability in supporting teaching and learning of thematic quality of life, the discipline of the same name. The methodology used to evaluate the product was qualitative, descriptive and field.

Orientador: Edberto Ferneda / Banca: Rachel Cristina Vesu Alves / Banca: Rogério Aparecido Sá Ramalho / Resumo: A recuperação de informação ocorre por meio da comparação entre as representações dos documentos de um acervo e a representação da necessidade de informação do usuário. Um documento é recuperado quando sua representação coincidir total ou parcialmente com a representação da necessidade de informação do usuário. O processo de recuperação de informação pode ser visto como um problema linguístico no qual o conteúdo informacional dos documentos e a necessidade de informação do usuário são representados por um conjunto de termos. A eficiência do processo de recuperação de informação depende da qualidade das representações dos documentos e dos termos empregados pelo usuário para representar sua necessidade de informação. Quanto mais compatíveis forem essas representações maior será a eficiência do processo de recuperação. A partir de uma pesquisa exploratória e descritiva fundamentada em bibliografia específica, este trabalho propõe a utilização de ontologias computacionais em sistemas de recuperação de informação baseados no Modelo Espaço Vetorial. As ontologias são empregadas como estrutura terminológica externa utilizadas tanto na expansão dos termos de indexação quanto na expansão dos termos que compõe a expressão de busca. A expansão dos termos de indexação é feita logo após a extração dos termos mais representativos do documento em análise durante o processo de indexação, consistindo na adição de novos termos conceitualmente relacionados a fim de enriquecer a representação do... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The information retrieval occurs by means of match between the representations of documents from a collection and the representation of user information's needs. A document is retrieved when its representation matches totally or partially to the user information's needs. The process of information retrieval can be seen as a linguistic issue in which the document information content and the user information need are represented by a set of terms. Its efficiency depends on the quality of the representations of the documents and the terms used to represent the user's information need. The more compatible these representations were, the more efficient the retrieval process. Based on an exploratory and descriptive research substantiated in a specific bibliography, this paper offers to use computational ontologies in information retrieval systems based on the Vector Space Model. The ontologies are applied as external terminological structures used in the indexing terms expansion as well as in the expansion of the terms which compound the query expression. The indexing terms expansion is made as soon as the extraction of the more representative terms of the document in analysis during the indexing process, consisting on the adding of new conceptually related terms in order to improve the document representation. Query expansion is obtained from adding new related terms to the existent ones in the query expression to better contextualize them. In this propose, only the terminological... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

MAJOR PROFESSORS: DR. UCHE ONYEBADI & DR. KATHERINE T. FRITH This dissertation was conducted to determine whom the Kuwaiti newspapers indexed in their news reports during the Karamat Watan protests, and how Twitter influenced the indexing process. This study also examined how and why Twitter affected Kuwaiti journalists' agenda building process during their coverage of the protests. For the purpose of this study, the theoretical framework was the indexing model and the agenda building theory. To answer the research questions and hypothesis in this dissertation the researcher used a mixed method approach, comprising the quantitative content analysis of Kuwaiti newspapers and qualitative in-depth interviews with Kuwaiti journalists. The content analysis results show that Kuwaiti newspapers indexed more public views than official views in their coverage of the Karamat Watan protests and the number of non-official sources is larger than the number of official sources in the coverage of the event- driven news. Also, the analysis shows that during the protests the independent newspapers indexed more public views than the semi- official newspapers in Kuwait. Furthermore, the interviews show that Kuwaiti journalists were not unanimous in their opinions regarding the role of twitter in their agenda building process during the protests. While some of them believed that twitter was a good tool that helped them in their coverage of the protests in particular and other events in general, others said that it was hard to be confident about the credibility of the online sources.

THESIS Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree MAGISTER TECHNOLOGIAE in INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY in the FACULTY OF BUSINESS INFORMATICS at the CAPE PENINSULA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY 2005 / The aim of this research was to determine how search engine exclusion policies and spam affect the indexing of e-Commerce websites. The Internet has brought along new ways of doing business. The unexpected growth of the World Wide Web made it essential for firms to adopt e-commerce as a means of obtaining a competitive edge. The introduction of e-commerce in turn facilitated the breaking down of physical barriers that were evident in traditional business operations. It is important for e-commerce websites to attract visitors, otherwise the website content is irrelevant. Websites can be accessed through the use of search engines, and it is estimated that 88% of users start with search engines when completing tasks on the web. This has resulted in web designers aiming to have their websites appear in the top ten search engine result list, as a high placement of websites in search engines is one of the strongest contributors to a commercial website’s success. To achieve such high rankings, web designers often adopt Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. Some of these practices invariably culminate in undeserving websites achieving top rankings. It is not clear how these SEO practices are viewed by search engines, as some practices that are deemed unacceptable by certain search engines are accepted by others. Furthermore, there are no clear standards for assessing what is considered good or bad SEO practices. This confuses web designers in determining what is spam, resulting in the amount of search engine spam having increased over time, impacting adversely on search engine results. From the literature reviewed in this thesis, as well as the policies of five top search engines (Google, Yahoo!, AskJeeves, AltaVista, and Ananzi), this author was able to compile a list of what is generally considered as spam. Furthermore, 47 e-commerce websites were analysed to determine if they contain any form of spam. The five major search engines indexed some of these websites. This enabled the author to determine to what extent search engines adhere to their policies. This analysis returned two major findings. A small amount of websites contained spam, and from the pre-compiled list of spam tactics, only two were identified in the websites, namely keyword stuffing and page redirects. Of the total number of websites analysed, it was found that 21.3% of the websites contained spam. From these findings, the research contained in this thesis concluded that search engines adhere to their own policies, but lack stringent controls for the majority of websites that contained spam, and were still listed by search engines. In this study, the author only analysed e-commerce websites, and cannot therefore generalise the results to other websites outside ecommerce.