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In an age where information has become a crucial commodity, accessing appropriate information quickly is essential to economic success. Developing ways of improving information retrieval is therefore of central concern to human factors and technologists alike. One aspect of information access relates to the ability of individual office workers to manage and retrieve their own information effectively, and this is what the present research addresses. Previous work in the area has been dominated by designing computer interfaces for the average user. This research investigates how people's needs might differ according to circumstance and examines a wider range of design possibilities. Specifically it sets out to relate retrieval problems (specific information retrieval rather than e.g. browsing or reminding) to job and individual (personality) differences within the general context of personal information management in offices using traditional technologies of paper, filing cabinets and desks. This is achieved by both extensive fieldwork and the use of simulated filing-retrieval systems in a controlled context.

The research conducted for this thesis investigates the impact of thesauri on users' information searching behaviour, and the integration of thesauri into information searching interfaces in order to support the searching process. The work reported here consists of two preliminary studies, which served to refine research questions and explore the methodology, followed by two in-depth studies. The two in-depth studies were conducted with FACET, an experimental system developed at the University of Glamorgan in the context of an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)-funded project focussing on faceted information retrieval in indexed multimedia collections. These studies were conducted with the participation of museum and library professionals. The author used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, such as "think aloud" protocols, questionnaires, application log files and content analysis. The in-depth studies resulted in important findings regarding the FACET interface which were considered in its further development. Findings also relate to thesaurus use in general - it was for example observed that behaviours such as browsing the thesaurus are not suitable at all search stages, so that users need to be guided in their choice of tools. One of the main findings was that conceptual problems encountered by searchers with little formal search training caused more difficulties than those related to interface design. This resulted in the conclusion that the information searching process needs to be supported by the interface and that more extensive use of thesauri in the form of support tools is possible at different stages of the search process. Based on literature on the information searching process and data from the first FACET study, the basis for a model of information searching in controlled vocabulary enhanced systems was developed and subsequently refined with data from the second in-depth study. This model aims in particular at facilitating the design and development of such systems. It consists of a textual and graphical representation of the search stages and an account of potential problems, their causes, possible detrimental effects on the further progress of the search and suggestions on how these can be avoided, under particular consideration of tools based on controlled vocabularies.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:25:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T14:00:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 01259.pdf: 1307198 bytes, checksum: 1a4660f56ed8f02ce254781165aa5e11 (MD5) / Dissertacao (Mestrado) / IEA/D / Instituto Brasileiro de Informacao Cientifica e Tecnologica - IBICT/RJ

The research reported in this thesis is about the description and discussion of an experimental document retrieval system for Arabic texts, using linguistic methods of analysis. Specifically, Arabic presents difficulties for the efficient retrieval of information because it is an agglutinative language, thus rendering the stop list method (as commonly used for English texts) near to useless.

Our research examines text knowledge: the knowledge encoded in text and the knowledge about a text. We approach text knowledge from different perspectives, describing the theories and techniques that have been applied to extracting, representing and deploying this knowledge, and propose some novel techniques that may enhance the understanding of text knowledge. These techniques include the concept of virtual corpus hierarchies, hybrid symbolic and connectionist representation and reasoning, text analysis and self-organising corpora. We present these techniques in a framework that embraces the different facets of text knowledge as a whole, be it corpus organisation and text identification, text analysis, or knowledge representation and reasoning. This framework comprises three phases, that of organisation, analysis and evaluation of text, where a single text might be a complete work, a technical term, or even a single letter. The techniques proposed are demonstrated by implementations of computer systems and some experiments based on these implementations: the Quirk Experiments. Through these experiments we show how the highly interconnected nature of text knowledge can be reduced or abstracted for specific purposes, from a range of techniques based on explicit symbolic representations and self-organising connectionist schemes.

The World Wide Web as a repository of information has had a great influence on our lives. This influence is increasing as the web introduces applications in addition to information. These applications have several advantages, such as world wide accessibility, distance group learning and collaboration. Furthermore, the web encourages training applications since it offers multi-media that can support all stages of training. On the other hand, the virtual reality technology has been utilised to provide new systematic training methods for surgical procedures. These solutions are usually expensive in terms of cost and computation. In this thesis we propose a novel solution to fulfill the training needs of radiologists performing one type of minimally invasive surgery known as interventional radiology. Our training method combines the capabilities of virtual reality to provide realistic simulation environment together with the web environment to provide platform independent, scalable and accessible system. In this thesis we analyse this type of surgical procedure in order to deduce the training requirements of such an application. Then, we investigate the possibility of fulfilling these requirements within the server-client architecture of the web environment. We study the degree to which current web technologies- such as Java and VRML- can support the development of a three-dimensional virtual environment with complex interactions. Furthermore, we study the plausibility of providing high computational behaviour modelling training environment on the web by utilising physically-based modelling techniques. We also discuss the effect of adopting the web environment on fulfilling the virtual reality and training requirements of our system. Finally, we evaluate the resulting system to find out how useful is the proposed solution from the clinical point of view.

Data is an important resource of an organization and is one of the fundamental building blocks of an effective information system. The failure of top-level management to define a framework for information systems and to recognise the potential of the data resource has a serious impact on information systems costs and development. This thesis attempts to identify some of the problem areas associated with unmanaged data and proposes a framework for the design of a Data Administration and Control System (DACS). Existing data analysis techniques have been reviewed and were found to be inadequate to meet the general requirements for data definition and documentation. DACS, when implemented, will assist in the identification and definition of the data resource, how it is used and where it is stored throughout the organization. It provides a tool to monitor and control the data and to assist in the design of information systems. DACS has applicability in the growing field of computer-aided information systems analysis and design. DACS itself is an automated approach to the definition of data and its uses. Extensions to the basic design are discussed which would further contribute to the development of computer-aided design tools. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The objective of this thesis is to develop and define the concept of a total management information system. The term "total system" has been grossly misrepresented since its coinage, however, the misuse can be attributed to ignorance of its full meaning. The misuse is also attributed to narrow thinking on behalf of the user for its application has mainly been directed to a specific circumstance. The study defines the term "total management information system" and it also outlines the attributes which make up the total system. As in all situations where an ideal is created, there is resistence to reaching the ideal - these barriers are enumerated and commented upon. To test the validity of the concept, it is applied to an existing company's informational system by the methodology of a systems analysis. Conclusions are reached on the soundness of the concept and on the status of the case company toward its claim of holding the totality status. Primary research was conducted on the theory of a total system; secondary research was conducted into the existing systems of the case company. Throughout the study, observations were made concerning the problems associated with the topic and an evaluation is made on the status of the evolution of the total information system. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate