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In response to questions by Buxton and Meadows, there was an examination of the occurrence of title words in the abstracts, first paragraphs, last paragraphs and cited titles of research papers in chemistry, economics, history, mathematics and philosophy for the 1960 and 1970 eras. Title word occurrence in first paragraphs varied little among disciplines. Last paragraphs tended to have most frequent occurrence of title words in history and philosophy, and cited titles had most frequent occurrence in chemistry and mathematics. There was no significant difference between chemistry and mathematics of occurrence in abstracts; abstracts were not available for the other disciplines. Among disciplines taken as a whole, the best reflection of title word occurrence was the collection of abstracts, followed in order by first paragraphs, last paragraphs and cited titles. First and last paragraphs together provided 70% to 80% of the title words. For most disciplines, longer than average titles did demonstrate a higher frequency of title word occurrence in first and last paragraphs than did titles in general. The results implied that indexing based on extraction of title words could employ similar procedures from discipline to discipline. Nevertheless, sensitive information retrieval systems should be prepared for changes in the vocabulary of fields like history and philosophy to occur possibly more slowly than in fields like mathematics and chemistry.

The earlier work by Buxton and Meadows, reporting the changes in information content of the titles of research papers in eleven different periodicals between 1947 and 1973, has been updated to 1984. Significant increases since 1973 were found for the Lancet and Economica. The British Journal of Sociology shows a significant increase since 1950. No significant changes were found for any period in Philosophy.

There is a huge amount of information and data stored in publicly available online databases that consist of large text files accessed by Boolean search techniques. It is widely held that less use is made of these databases than could or should be the case, and that one reason for this is that potential users find it difficult to identify which databases to search, to use the various command languages of the hosts and to construct the Boolean search statements required. This reasoning has stimulated a considerable amount of exploration and development work on the construction of search interfaces, to aid the inexperienced user to gain effective access to these databases. The aim of our paper is to review aspects of the design of such interfaces: to indicate the requirements that must be met if maximum aid is to be offered to the inexperienced searcher; to spell out the knowledge that must be incorporated in an interface if such aid is to be given; to describe some of the solutions that have been implemented in experimental and operational interfaces; and to discuss some of the problems encountered. The paper closes with an extensive bibliography of references relevant to online search aids, going well beyond the items explicitly mentioned in the text. An index to software appears after the bibliography at the end of the paper.

Currently, people leaving prisons face concurrent risks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the overdose public health emergency. The closure or reduction of community services people rely on after release such as treatment centres and shelters has exacerbated the risks of poor health outcomes and harms. This paper aims to learn from peer health mentors (PHM) about changes to their work during overlapping health emergencies, as well as barriers and opportunities to support people leaving prison in this context.

The Unlocking the Gates (UTG) Peer Health Mentoring Program supports people leaving prison in British Columbia during the first three days after release. The authors conducted two focus groups with PHM over video conference in May 2020. Focus groups were recorded and transcribed, and themes were iteratively developed using narrative thematic analysis.

The findings highlighted the importance of peer health mentorship for people leaving prisons. PHM discussed increased opportunities for collaboration, ways the pandemic has changed how they are able to provide support, and how PHM are able to remain responsive and flexible to meet client needs. Additionally, PHM illuminated ways that COVID-19 has exacerbated existing barriers and identified specific actions needed to support client health, including increased housing and recovery beds, and tools for social and emotional well-being.

This study contributes to our understanding of peer health mentorship during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of mentors. PHM expertise can support release planning, improved health and well-being of people leaving prison and facilitate policy-supported pandemic responses.

Micro CDS/ISIS is a software package distributed by Unesco to non‐profit making organisations, free of charge. It is suitable for handling non‐numeric, variable length, textual information. This article studies the search interface of version 2.3 of the software in relation to user friendliness, user instructions, output control and documentation, in an evaluative manner with the objective of finding out whether Micro CDS/ISIS comfortably accommodates all kinds of users — novices, intermediates and the experienced. At the end, considering each and every aspect evaluated, it is concluded that Micro CDS/ ISIS is suitable more for experienced and intermediate users than for novices.

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is able to provide a detailed description of the subject content of a document in any area. Its hierarchical and synthetic structure, which is generally reflected in its notation, should enable computer searching for hierarchically‐related subjects and for the individual facets of a complex subject. The possibilities of using these features in automated retrieval are discussed, and attention is drawn to places where the UDC falls short. A number of online catalogues, databases, and information retrieval packages are discussed in terms of their ability to allow searching on UDC numbers. The most sophisticated ones, such as ETHICS at the ETH Library, use a separate file of verbal descriptors linked to the document file through UDC numbers. Suggestions are made for enhancing retrieval performance on UDC numbers in simple systems, and for ways in which the classification might be developed to improve automated searching.

The relative information content of titles of research papers in different subject areas has been examined by counting the number of their ‘substantive’ words in eleven English periodicals, two French and two German. Chemistry and botany (in which KWIC indexes are already produced) are found to have the highest values, followed by physics, medicine, history, and the social sciences, with philosophy lowest. The information content of the foreign titles when translated into English was almost equal to that of English titles in the same subjects. Most subjects showed a significant increase in the number of substantive words between 1947 and 1973. Some difficulties of searching by title due to the vocabularies of non‐scientific subjects are discussed.

The Primary Communications Research Centre started its life at the University of Leicester in 1976, closing down ten years later in 1986. Its objective — to study all aspects of primary communication — was unique at the time. This retrospective survey by the Project Head looks at the thinking behind the foundation of the Centre and assesses its activities.

This study tested the hypothesis that the vocabulary of a discipline whose major emphasis is on concrete phenomena will, on the average, have fewer synonyms per concept than will the vocabulary of a discipline whose major emphasis is on abstract phenomena. Subject terms from each of two concrete disciplines and two abstract disciplines were analysed. Results showed that there was a significant difference at the ·05 level between concrete and abstract disciplines but that the significant difference was attributable to only one of the abstract disciplines. The other abstract discipline was not significantly different from the two concrete disciplines. It was concluded that although there is some support for the hypothesis, at least one other factor has a stronger influence on terminological consistency than the phonomena with which a subject deals.