This exploratory study examines the explosive growth and the "bibliometrics" of the World Wide Web based on both analysis of over 30 gigabytes of web pages collected by the Inktomi "Web Crawler" and on the use of the DEC AltaVista search engine for cocitation analysis of a set of Earth Science related WWW sites. The statistical characteristics of web documents and their hypertext links are examined, along with examination of the characteristics of highly cited web documents.

This submission reports on a cross-disciplinary inquiry into topicality and relevance, involving an in-depth literature analysis and an inductive development of a faceted typology (containing 227 fine-grained topical relevance relationships arrayed in three facets and 33 types of presentation relationships). This inquiry reveals a large variety of topical connections beyond topic matching (the common assumption of topical relevance in the field), renders a closer look into the structure of a topic, and induces a generic topic-oriented information architecture that is meaningful across topics and domain boundaries. The findings from the analysis contribute to the foundation work of information organization, metadata development, intellectual access / information retrieval, and knowledge discovery. The typology of topical relevance relationships is structured with three major facets: * Functional role of a piece of information plays in the overall structure of a topic or an argument; * Mode of reasoning: How information contributes to the userâ s reasoning about a topic; * Semantic relationship: How information connects to a topic semantically. This inquiry demonstrated that topical relevance with its close linkage to thinking and reasoning is central to many disciplines. The multidisciplinary approach allows synthesis and examination from new angles, leading to an integrated scheme of relevance relationships or a system of thinking that informs each individual discipline. The scheme resolving from the synthesis can be used to improve text and image understanding, knowledge organization and retrieval, reasoning, argumentation, and thinking in general, by people and machines.

We consider ideas for a tighter integration of searching a digital library while writing a paper. A prototype system based on web services is described which allows us to explore the design space of ambient search tools to support and inspire the writing process. * A prototype system is available at http://pira.isrl.uiuc.edu

The latest developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have made the concept "Libraries without walls" into a practical reality. This has posed several challenges to the information work force and the information users. At the same time, we have noticed the issues related to the information overload and information quality. At this juncture, efforts are strengthening to develop means to persuade and equip the users and information specialists to achieve maximum efficiency in information services. It was observed that one of the important reasons for the under utilization of electronic information is the lack of requisite level of working knowledge and consumption skills among customers and information intermediaries (Sridhar, 1997). To improve the situation, the conventional user education programmes need be redefined and reengineered, to be it more technology oriented. It should be designed in such a way to provide confidence to the user in locating desired information (Francis, 2005).

This writing is to indicate the role of Library and Information System (LIS) professional is the media-tor in fulfilling and facilitating effectively the need of every mature individual in Indonesia to get the information needed in the relation of the building of Islamic knowledge. The focus is in information power in Islamic book put the idea of LIS professionals to facilitate the users to have their values be allowed to prevail in through publishing. The LIS professional shouldnâ t step aside from society; ac-cede to the request; then it means they contribute to the state of society. Information literacy should mean skilled behaviour in respect of understanding as a result of successful interaction with a source of information: the instrumental and the cognitive, implied in the publishing of Islamic translation book in Indonesia.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Vaughan, M. and Dillon, A. (1998) The role of genre in shaping our understanding of digital documents. Proc. 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science. Medford NJ: Information Today Inc., 559-566. Abstract: Interacting with documents in the digital domain is challenging many of our notions about discourse and its boundaries. Hyperlinked documents on the World Wide Web defy easy categorization and evaluation - making the role and value of digital documents difficult to assess. Most importantly, in such fluid and complex environments it is difficult to understand the nature of the interaction between users and information resources. This paper argues that notions such as navigation are limiting our understanding of these complex information spaces. Instead, what is needed is a broader framework of analysis that can embrace these concepts, and incorporate extended issues relating to shared understanding, relevance, and style. In the present paper we explore the utility of the intersection of genre theory and cognitive psychology in providing a meaningful framework for analysis and design purposes. In so doing we report the results of our latest research into the elements of genre that influence users of digital documents and provide examples of the usefulness of this analysis in web-based environments.

Search engines are about excitement, optimism, hope and enrichment. Search engines are also about despair and disappointment. A researcher while using search engines for resource discovery might have experienced one or the other sentiments. One may say that user satisfaction depends much upon the search strategies deployed by the user. But at the same time its also depends upon the quality of search engine used for information retrieval. Today, there are many search engines used for resource discovery. They display the results of the searches made in readily-comprehensible manner with lots of customization possibilities including refining and sorting. This paper is an attempt to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively the three most used and popular search engines for academic resource discovery: Google Scholar, Scirus and Windows Live Academic.

This paper reports on a study that explored the needs and challenges with respect to the creation of a collaboratory for library and information science practitioners. To identify needs and challenges interviews were conducted with practitioners at a variety of institutions. The results suggest that there is a need for a collaboratory to facilitate on-demand, personalized knowledge sharing. The collaboratory should also be well integrated into the everyday practice of library and information science practitioners.

The electronic engineering notebook is a pen-based computer tool designed to capture engineering notes and to assist in structuring them to facilitate subsequent information access. Experiments were conducted in which free-form and fixed-form note-taking interfaces were compared with respect to capturing and structuring notes from a design meeting. Suitability of domain-based and user-defined terminologies for semantic structuring was also tested. Results from the experiment confirmed that a free-form interface was easier to use for note-taking and structuring notes than were forms with fixed structure. However, difficulties with applying semantic categorizations were observed in both types of interface. The results indicated that terminology should be chosen appropriately to a task, and that experienced users have less problems with applying it. The experiment also demonstrated high diversity in note-taking styles, thus highlighting the need to accommodate individual preferences in electronic notebooks.

InterLibrary Cooperation is an important activity of libraries. However, the emerging digital library architecture has not explicitly supported this requirement. In this paper, we propose an InterLibrary Cooperation Framework for digital libraries using P2P technology. An application of this framework to Faculty Publication Sharing System is presented. Besides, a reputation model based on data mining is utilized to provide libraries with incentives to join this framework.