Information Retrieval List Digest 177 (August 31, 1993) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-177 IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 August 31, 1993 Volume X, Number 33 Issue 177 ********************************************************** II. QUERIES B. Request for Information 1. New Banking MIS Software IV. PROJECT WORK C. Abstracts 1. IR-related Dissertation Abstracts ********************************************************** II. QUERIES II.B.1. Fr: Kim Edward Kerns Re: New Banking MIS Software Recent articles have been written addressing Oracle's desire to take existing software and move it into Oracle's case tool set, thereby creating "templates." Existing customers and prospects would take these already developed "templates," modify them as appropriate and "jump start" the traditional development process. Oracle already has a few "templates" for a number of industries. One industry Oracle has recently targetted after several years of neglect is the Financial Services Industry. Oracle has the rights to market software called "Relationship Banker." This software addresses several customer needs and I will describe it briefly in the next paragragh. What I would like to determine is the level of interest present here on "internet" for this type of software. Please e-mail me at kkerns/char@vnet/net. The " Relationship Banker addresses needs of Bank Management in the areas of: 1. Customer, customer segment, product, product line, and organizational profitability. ( the software contains shareholder value, matched and pooled transfer pricing, risk allocation, and high level or detailed product costing principles ) key measurements are roe and roa . 2. Credit portfolio analysis to identify opportunities to better manage credit risk. 3. Decision support in providing a multitude of views on the business your customers are doing with you. This information is most useful in supporting downsizing, rightsizing and re-engineering decisions. 4. Cross legal entity Customer Information File supplying on-line trend information about your officers, customers, products, organizational units throughout your franchise. 5. Productivity enhancement tool telling you where your calling officers are spending their time . 6. Cross-Selling products and services.. Who are your most profitable customers, what services do they buy, what services should you be trying to sell to existing customers inside your organization? 7. Prospecting. When you combine purchased data about prospects with in-house data on customers - effective prospects list can be created that will bring in results with minimal effort. Please do not hesitate to pass this note along to others. I am anxious to hear your replys...... Kkerns/char@vnet/net ********************************************************** IV. PROJECT WORK IV.C.1. Fr: Susanne M. Humphrey Re: Selected IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts The following are citations selected by title and abstract as being related to Information Retrieval (IR), resulting from a computer search, using BRS Information Technologies, of the Dissertation Abstracts Online database produced by University Microfilms International (UMI). Included are UMI order number, title, author, degree, year, institution; number of pages, one or more Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) subject descriptors chosen by the author, and abstract. Unless otherwise specified, paper or microform copies of dissertations may be ordered from University Microfilms International, Dissertation Copies, Post Office Box 1764, Ann Arbor, MI 48106; telephone for U.S. (except Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska): 1-800-521-3042, for Canada: 1-800-268-6090. Price lists and other ordering and shipping information are in the introduction to the published DAI. An alternate source for copies is sometimes provided. Dissertation titles and abstracts contained here are published with permission of University Microfilms International, publishers of Dissertation Abstracts International (copyright by University Microfilms International), and may not be reproduced without their prior permission. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-31119. AU JUANG, MICHI. TI THE MEDAS NETWORK: OVERALL DESIGN AND APPLICATIONS AT COOK COUNTY HOSPITAL. IN Illinois Institute of Technology Ph.D. 1992, 134 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecB, pp2403. DE Computer Science. AB This thesis describes the design and implementation of a Local Area Network (LAN) for the MEDAS system. The goal is to provide total information management for physicians and health care workers and make that information accessible from every point in the clinic. The MEDAS system includes patient record input, diagnostic support, test selection, treatment protocols, severity estimation, report generation, and progress notes. Computerization of patient records can save money and increase accuracy and so improve patient care. But physicians, nurses, clerks and others all need to access the data about a particular patient from different places in a clinic. Small clinics may be short of money; it may not be necessary for them to buy a minicomputer or mainframe to handle this kind of bookkeeping. Two factors, cost and availability of data, persuaded us that what a small clinic needs is a LAN. All the modules of MEDAS are designed to be used by one user at a time now and all of them can be run on a PC. It was our dream to build an affordable LAN for a small clinic and support the MEDAS expert system. Therefore, we decided that we should integrate all the modules into a LAN, so that multiple users can run MEDAS at different workstations, PC's or Macintoshes, and all the modules of MEDAS can also share the same data. The original design was intended to support a small clinic. We were then asked to implement this design at Cook County Hospital Emergency Department. The fact that the design of the MEDAS LAN, while originally intended for a small clinic has been proven to be viable in a very large environment like the Cook County Hospital Emergency Department, shows that it is a truly effective and successful piece of work. The successful Cook County Login System has led to an opportunity to test the medical record input system in the MEDAS LAN environment. Working in a clinical environment has given the opportunity to view the ASTM 1238 standard in terms of a practical implementation and led to the amendments we propose in this thesis. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-27558. AU SUBRAMANIAN, RAMESH. TI OBJECT-ORIENTED MODELING AND INTELLIGENT QUERY PROCESSING IN SPATIAL DATABASES. IN Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - Newark Ph.D. 1992 246 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecB, pp2413. DE Computer Science. Engineering, System Science. Artificial Intelligence. AB Spatial Data Modeling is currently an active area of research. A related area that is also currently being actively researched, is the development of "analysis operators" or flexible operators ("imprecise spatial operators"). The Spatial Data Models that have been suggested have certain limitations. They are ad hoc. No design methodology is followed. Researchers recognize the need for representing different perspectives within the same schema. However, in actuality, most of the proposed models use different schemas to represent different perspectives. There are also no facilities available for reasoning about the user perspective, given a query, or for dynamically processing imprecise spatial query operators. Even though certain imprecise operators (e.g. adjacent, near) have been implemented, a limited approach has been taken. The operators are assumed to have precise interpretations. The notion of changes in the meanings of the operators with respect to the user perspective has not been incorporated. Facilities to capture the user's spatial perceptions are not provided. No underlying methodology is used in developing processing approaches for imprecise spatial operators. This research addresses issues related to spatial data modeling, query processing strategies for certain semantically imprecise spatial operators, and certain complex geographic applications such as districting. We develop an Object-oriented Spatial Data Model, that is motivated by the Probe Spatial Data Model. The methodology adopted for developing the model is the Responsibility-Driven Approach. Our model supports the representation of certain naturally occurring relationships (e.g. the containment hierarchy). The model is adequate for deriving, on a dynamic basis, the many and complex relationships that exist among the objects. Furthermore, the model incorporates into one schema various user perspectives and different object representations in relation to perspective. We develop operational algorithms for processing such imprecise operators as between, close-to, and adjacent-to, using an Analogical Reasoning approach. We implement and validate the data model and query processor on the LAURE object-oriented system, using real life geographic data provided by the Census Bureau. We show how our work can be applied to real life districting problems. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-27270. AU GALLANT, CHESTER ELROY. TI A STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES IN MUSEUMS. IN The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1992, 224 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecA, pp1442. DE Education, Philosophy of. Education, Art. Education, General. AB Museums actively engage in education as a part of their day to day programming and yet a national study of art museum directors, curators and educators conducted by a major researcher in art education reveals that there is a "lack of consensus" about "ends and means" of educational programs in their institutions. Similarly, the national museum association also calls for a "new approach to learning" in museums so that they can "realize their full potential as educational institutions." Using the case study method of descriptive research, I surveyed eighteen reports on science and art museum education from the published research literature pertinent to this field to determine the status of museum education. Following a critical analysis of the reports, based on criteria that I developed from instructional design theory using media and approaches to criticism in the visual environment, I synthesized the findings. As a result I discovered that although a de facto museum education exits, it is clearly idiosyncratic. My conclusion is that if art museums would employ the following approaches in their setting a more effective "learning" outcome would be the result. Those approaches are the: (1) General principles for designing instruction. (2) Methods for motivating students to learn. (3) Methods for teaching specific cognitive skills. (4) Consideration of the typological information about the learner. (5) Employment of the critical phases in responding to art. (6) Methods for criticizing art. If the cognitive processing of information is concerned with various mental activities involving visual perception, thinking, knowledge representation, memory and problem solving toward the goal of "learning," then Art museums must begin to provide more opportunities for visitors to actively experience and practice with the "visual" information, unique to this setting. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-27875. AU FENTON, VIRGINIA LEONA. TI HELPING NOVICE USERS: A FIELD STUDY OF COGNITIVE STYLE AND STUDENT LEARNING ASSISTED BY AN UNSTRUCTURED FULL-TEXT RETRIEVAL SYSTEM. IN Stevens Institute of Technology Ph.D. 1992, 341 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecA, pp1489. DE Education, Technology. Business Administration, Management. Information Science. Psychology, Personality. Education, Business. AB A one-semester exploratory study examined how technically-oriented (i.e., Stevens) students used an on-line unstructured full-text retrieval system to learn material in a humanities course (HU 363: Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution). The primary question was how individuals' differences in cognitive style interact with student use and performance with such an unstructured system. The effect of cognitive style on course assignment and examination grades, as well as on student attitudes from responses to questionnaires administered throughout the semester was examined. Content analysis was performed on the results of thirty-six half-hour individual interviews reaching twenty-five of the twenty-nine students. The Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator (MBTI) and Alternate Uses (Christensen, Guilford, Merrifield and Wilson, 1960) were used to differentiate the cognitive styles of the students in this study. Little relationship between cognitive style and amount of use or performance was found, but there was a relationship with how the system was used. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-28396. AU JOHNSON, ARTHUR CONRAD. TI A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS' INTERACTION WITH AN INTEGRATED-MEDIA COMPOSING PROGRAM. IN Harvard University Ed.D. 1992, 173 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecA, pp1489. DE Education, Technology. Education, Language and Literature. AB This thesis describes efforts to discern students' patterns of using an experimental program's components to execute a teacher designed writing activity over a four-day period. The purpose of these efforts is to determine whether students will use tools that enable the integration of text and graphic media and that facilitate locating information and features in an integrated-media environment. This descriptive inquiry serves to develop a framework for further study on how students use integrated media for composing. Twenty students from two low-track tenth-grade English classes at a large urban high school participated in this study. Keystroke data, collected unobtrusively by the experimental program, enabled me to trace the students' use of tools for text and graphic production and their use of devices for locating and retrieving information. Students' responses to open-ended written survey and oral interview questions were analyzed to identify factors about the program that they think enhance or inhibit their composing processes. Coded transcriptions of teacher interviews were examined to gain additional insights about the students' use of the program's components. Data analyses revealed that tool use data were clustered into two patterns. Students who used graphic production tools to incorporate scanned pictures or drawings into their reports generally made broader and more extended use of other program components than did students whose activities excluded the use of these tools. Survey and interview responses indicate that students found the program's metaphorically familiar components to be enjoyable to use and helpful for their writing. Their responses also suggest that it was necessary to use the program's graphic organizers to reduce the cognitive load that may have resulted from efforts to build a conceptual representation for the program's environment. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-28525. AU TAYLOR, STEVEN JOSEPH. TI CHILDREN'S USAGE OF AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM. IN Columbia University Teachers College Ed.D. 1992, 169 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecA, pp1492. DE Education, Technology. Information Science. Psychology, Development. AB There is a growing need for children to learn to use information retrieval systems, yet little is known about what children's strengths and weaknesses may be in using such systems. In this study, twenty fifth-grade children were assigned a single topic to research, using an electronic encyclopedia. Each child worked individually, using the full-text searching mode of the encyclopedia software. Before each session, the subjects were interviewed about their experience with computers and encyclopedias and about their knowledge of the research topic. During the sessions, the subjects explained orally what they were doing and why. Their remarks were recorded on audio tape and their keystrokes were recorded in a computer file. Data from the interviews and from achievement records were correlated with measures of search performance. Selected sequences of behavior were analyzed in light of beliefs about the logical and semantic skills of eleven-year-old children. There were no significant correlations between measures of individual characteristics and search performance. Interesting behaviors included narrowing down search queries that had retrieved one or zero items and needlessly narrowing down queries with redundant terms. Conclusions included recommendations for teachers about age-appropriateness of different search assignments; recommendations for teachers and librarians about information retrieval training for children; recommendations for software designers about user interface design; and recommendations for future research. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-27948. AU ANTONUCCI, YVONNE LEDERER. TI THE EFFECT OF A HIERARCHICAL TASK-SPECIFIC EXTERNAL CONCEPTUAL MODEL ON THE LEARNABILITY AND USABILITY OF MICROCOMPUTER APPLICATIONS BY NOVICES. IN Drexel University Ph.D. 1992, 126 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecA, pp1305. DE Information Science. Education, Psychology. Computer Science. AB This study focuses on how an external conceptual model of a microcomputer system could be constructed which would match problem-solving processes of novice users. The study's premise was that this conceptual model would aid novice users in forming initial mental models, as defined by Norman (1983), that guide them in using and understanding the system. Research findings indicate that the problem-solving process depends upon previously developed mental models of similar systems which novice users lack. Furthermore, the absence of these mental models hinders performance (the ability to use a system and accomplish a task). Researchers have agreed that a hierarchical structure is the basic form of the human problem-solving process. This study investigated the effectiveness of a hierarchically organized external conceptual model of a microcomputer system on novice users' ability to use and understand that system. Two external conceptual models were developed for the study and examined through a laboratory study which compared their effectiveness in aiding novice users to use and understand a database system. The reference manual followed traditional manual design considerations. The hierarchical model was developed using characteristics identified in novice user problem-solving. The results indicated that the hierarchical model group performed better and had a higher understanding of the system than the reference model group. The hierarchical model group was able to complete more of the assigned database tasks, with fewer errors, and spent less time with the model than the reference manual group. Although, no statistically significant result was detected in the amount of time to complete the combined tasks, the hierarchical model group was able to complete the first task faster. No evidence was indicated that the perceived difficulty of the system between the two groups was different. The findings suggest that a hierarchical external conceptual model improves the match between the human problem-solving process among novice users and the representation of microcomputer systems. They contribute to a better understanding of external conceptual model representation for novice users in assisting them to initiate the problem-solving process necessary for mental model formation of microcomputer systems. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-28661. AU GILLESPIE, THOMAS KEVIN. TI MAPPING THOUGHTS: VISUAL INTERFACES FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL. IN University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. 1991, 254 pages. SO DAI v53(05), SecA, pp1305. DE Information Science. Library Science. Computer Science. AB This dissertation examines interface design for information retrieval systems from the perspective of visual thinking. In the first section I begin by arguing that we have a history of visual thinking which extends back as far as the caves of Altamira and continues in an unbroken line through mythology, the development of writing, and the fine arts to the modern development of television, video games, and cyberspace. I support my argument with cognitive theories of the mind, and empirical research from the fields of cognitive psychology and human factors which demonstrates the usefulness of visual information to aid visual recall and learning. I finish by discussing the history of humankind as a history of visual thinking which argues for an integration of text and graphics to aide the user in searching for information. From this point of view, I next examine traditional information systems such as pictograms, maps, and cataloging systems, and then computerized information systems such as online public access catalogs, spreadsheets, the Desktop Metaphor, and Geographic Information Systems. I then illustrate and comment on five visual interface projects which demonstrate the range of approaches being taken in the design of graphical interfaces for information retrieval. In the second half of this dissertation I develop a detailed prototype model of a visual interface for an online line public access catalog. In this section I begin with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the University of California online public access catalog, MELVYL$\sp\circler$. In the final section I develop a prototype model of a visual interface to the MELVYL system which I call VisualMELVYL. This model is based upon the history of visual thinking, information retrieval, current graphical design work, and research on visual recall and learning from text and pictures. VisualMELVYL demonstrates a visual interface to an online public access catalog, and potentially to any information resource connected to a wide area network such as the Internet. ********************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. 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