Search results

This article provides an overview of recent developments relating to the application of thesauri in information organisation and retrieval on the World Wide Web. It describes some recent thesaurus projects undertaken to facilitate resource description and discovery and access to wide‐ranging information resources on the Internet. Types of thesauri available on the Web, thesauri integrated in databases and information retrieval systems, and multiple‐thesaurus systems for cross‐database searching are also discussed. Collective efforts and events in addressing the standardisation and novel applications of thesauri are briefly reviewed.

This paper seeks to report an investigation into the ways in which end‐users perceive a thesaurus‐enhanced search interface, in particular thesaurus and search interface usability.

Thirty academic users, split between staff and postgraduate students, carrying out real search requests were observed during this study. Users were asked to comment on a range of thesaurus and interface characteristics including: ease of use, ease of learning, ease of browsing and navigation, problems and difficulties encountered while interacting with the system, and the effect of browsing on search term selection.

The results suggest that interface usability is a factor affecting thesaurus browsing/navigation and other information‐searching behaviours. Academic staff viewed the function of a thesaurus as being useful for narrowing down a search and providing alternative search terms, while postgraduates stressed the role of the thesaurus for broadening searches and providing new terms.

The paper provides an insight into the ways in which end‐users make use of and interact with a thesaurus‐enhanced search interface. This area is new since previous research has particularly focused on how professional searchers and librarians make use of thesauri and thesaurus‐enhanced search interfaces. The research reported here suggests that end‐users with varying levels of domain knowledge are able to use thesauri that are integrated into search interfaces. It also provides design implications for search interface developers as well as information professionals who are involved in teaching online searching.

Many scholarly articles acknowledge input from colleagues, mentors and trusted assessors. This study explores the social function and cognitive significance of acknowledgements. A six category typology was developed and applied to 444 acknowledgements which were carried by research articles in JASIS (1970–1990). It is proposed that acknowledgements and citations should be used conjointly in the assessment of research performance and in disciplinary exegesis.

The basis of this paper is to carry on a bibliometric analysis to investigate how “marketing” decisions have affected “packaging” success in different disciplines. This analysis covers from the first paper published on this topic (in 1956) to the last papers published in 2019.

A total of 1,170 scientific papers (including 14,177 citations within those papers) were retrieved from the Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus, dated from 1956 to 2019. Scimat software was used to analyse the data.

The results of this paper show that two main sectors constitute the focus of packaging studies from a marketing approach: food and tobacco. Recently, the main topics of research have evolved towards sustainable and health packaging, concerning different agents involved in packaging decisions: retailers, marketers, consumers and producers. So, both lines of research represent promising lines of research.

Three different investigating profiles (i.e. engineers, marketers-psychologists and doctors-scientists) have examined how packaging should be prepared to succeed. However, a holistic bibliometric analysis about “packaging” and “marketing” is missing from those three branches of knowledge. This study is important to guide future lines of research to fill the identified gaps.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

WITH this issue we are commencing the twenty‐seventh year of our career as an independent Library Journal and trust that we shall carry on the tradition of our illustrious founder and continue to criticise or praise without fear or favour. During the past twelve months our editorial staff has successfully produced special numbers dealing with Bookbinding, Book Selection, Children's Departments, Classification, and Colonial Libraries. Judging by the correspondence we have received, our efforts have been greatly appreciated by the majority of our readers. Naturally we have not pleased everybody and we have even been dubbed the “little contemporary” in some quarters. However, we can point to an unbroken record of twenty‐six years' endeavour to serve the library profession and we ourselves are justly proud of the contemptible “little contemporary” that did not cease to appear even during the darkest hours of the dread war period.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.