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1 – 10 of over 78000The serial coverage and indexing policies of Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA), Oceanic Abstracts, Biosis, and Georef were compared. Analyses indicated considerable…
Abstract
The serial coverage and indexing policies of Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA), Oceanic Abstracts, Biosis, and Georef were compared. Analyses indicated considerable overlap in serial sources in marine biology for ASFA, Oceanic Abstracts, and Georef. Biosis appeared to include the largest amount of material relevant to marine biology and Georef the largest relevant to marine geology. Oceanic Abstracts and Georef provided the most extensive general subject indexing, Biosis the most complete taxonomic indexing, and ASFA and Georef the easiest systems for geographic retrieval.
Wouter Mettrop and Paul Nieuwenhuysen
An empirical investigation of the consistency of retrieval through Internet search engines is reported. Thirteen engines are evaluated: AltaVista, EuroFerret, Excite, HotBot…
Abstract
An empirical investigation of the consistency of retrieval through Internet search engines is reported. Thirteen engines are evaluated: AltaVista, EuroFerret, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, MSN, NorthernLight, Snap, WebCrawler and three national Dutch engines: Ilse, Search.nl and Vindex. The focus is on a characteristics related to size: the degree of consistency to which an engine retrieves documents. Does an engine always present the same relevant documents that are, or were, available in its databases? We observed and identified three types of fluctuations in the result sets of several kinds of searches, many of them significant. These should be taken into account by users who apply an Internet search engine, for instance to retrieve as many relevant documents as possible, or to retrieve a document that was already found in a previous search, or to perform scientometric/bibliometric measurements. The fluctuations should also be considered as a complication of other research on the behaviour and performance of Internet search engines. In conclusion: in view of the increasing importance of the Internet as a publication/communication medium, the fluctuations in the result sets of Internet search engines can no longer be neglected.
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The assignment of targets to instruments in developing countries cannot satisfactorily follow any simple universal rule. Which approach is appropriate is influenced by whether the…
Abstract
The assignment of targets to instruments in developing countries cannot satisfactorily follow any simple universal rule. Which approach is appropriate is influenced by whether the economy is dominated by primary exports, by the importance of the domestic bond market and bank credit, by the extent of existing restriction in foreign exchange and financial markets, by the presence or absence of persistent high inflation, and by the existence or non‐existence of an active international market in the country's currency. Eighteen observations and maxims on stabilisation policy are tentatively drawn (pp. 64–8) from the material reviewed, and the maxims are partly summarised (pp. 69–71) in a schematic assignment, with variations, of targets to instruments.
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In response to its mission of identifying and describing problems of interdisciplinary searching, and of proposing remedies and solutions, the ICSTI Group on Interdisciplinary…
Abstract
In response to its mission of identifying and describing problems of interdisciplinary searching, and of proposing remedies and solutions, the ICSTI Group on Interdisciplinary Searching gathered the relevant information through a questionnaire addressed to the database builders, online system vendors, search intermediaries and end users; analysed and organised the input; and presented a report. The report discusses the problems within six distinct categories: coverage and technical content of the database; bibliographic information; textual content; numeric data; file organisation, and interdisciplinary searching on multiple hosts. Under each category, problems are first listed in a generic way and then described in greater detail. Numerous specific examples are given with explanations, whenever feasible, of the reasons for their occurrence. For each category, possible remedies and solutions are listed. The most essential recommendations that have emerged deal with the need for greater standardisation at every stage in building the databases and in organising access to them. A number of bodies and groups working on international and national standards, and on solving other specific aspects of the problems, have been identified. The needs for close co‐operation, exchange of good documentation, extensive training and mutual understanding are most evident.
Peter G.B. Enser and Harriet P. Orr
Organisations responsible for the maintenance of photographic archives are showing a developing interest in the creation of compact disc digital catalogues. These are perceived as…
Abstract
Organisations responsible for the maintenance of photographic archives are showing a developing interest in the creation of compact disc digital catalogues. These are perceived as a means of providing a ‘shop window’ to their collections, and a facility whereby their clients can order pictures directly without recourse to request mediation by a picture researcher or librarian. The Hulton Deutsch Collection's pioneering approach to this new dimension in picture library operation is described, with particular reference to those policies on indexing and interface design by which that approach was guided. Brief consideration is given to the extension of such desktop browsing facilities into the arena of high‐resolution electronic image delivery.
At the beginning of the 1970s it became apparent to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food that the use of computers for information work merited serious consideration…
Abstract
At the beginning of the 1970s it became apparent to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food that the use of computers for information work merited serious consideration. We had taken part in investigations which indicated that the technology was well developed and reliable. We knew that large scale commercial services were available. What we did not know was the real value of these external services to the Ministry. All the databases concerned were derived from very familiar printed secondary journals. Did mechanized operation offer substantial advantages? Was the cost justified? How could mechanized operations fit into the present library activities? If the use of computers did offer improved facilities, what administrative arrangements were necessary? It was decided, therefore, to attempt to answer these questions by the evaluation of external computer‐based bibliographic information services under practical conditions.
Complete texts of many journals are now available for online searching. Most of these full text databases have been made available on the same or similar search systems that…
Abstract
Complete texts of many journals are now available for online searching. Most of these full text databases have been made available on the same or similar search systems that provide access to bibliographic information. The systems use inverted files that retain limited context information (e.g., paragraphs and location of words within paragraphs). The retrieval techniques used are simply those that were developed earlier for bibliographic databases. Retrieval relies on Boolean logic, word stem searching with truncation, and word proximity specification. Minor adjustments have been made for the display of full text databases, allowing words resulting in retrieval to be displayed in context; but changes have not been made in retrieval techniques. This is due to the reliance on search systems that provide access to many types of databases, all of which are by‐products of improved techniques for creating printed publications.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the problems of using metadata to file electronic documents as well as the problems of using a purely functional filing scheme. It aims…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the problems of using metadata to file electronic documents as well as the problems of using a purely functional filing scheme. It aims to explore how a functional file plan can be created from a business classification scheme by inserting “metadata signpost folders” at strategic points in the filing hierarchy to create a “hybrid functional file plan”.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on experience and published literature to discuss methods for creating a hybrid functional file plan.
Findings
The paper concludes that functional filing is the only method of filing e‐documents that can effectively support good information management practice, enabling all e‐documents to be managed in line with corporate information management policies, and that it may also be the only viable method of providing true “shared” filing in support of knowledge management and business efficiency.
Originality/value
The article shows that a functional filing scheme, retrieving, cross‐referencing and grouping documents by subject (or other metadata attributes) requires special measures and suggests that current IT, EDRM and related technologies may not fully meet the requirements by searching/sorting on metadata terms. It may be necessary to compromise a purely functional file plan by the inclusion of metadata “signpost” folders into the functional folder structure in order to create a hybrid functional file plan.
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To construct an index (index of environmental sensitivity performance) to be used in a cross‐country trade model in order to analyze the effect of various degrees of environmental…
Abstract
Purpose
To construct an index (index of environmental sensitivity performance) to be used in a cross‐country trade model in order to analyze the effect of various degrees of environmental stringency on the trade patterns, and especially on the export performance of the countries.
Design/methodology/approach
The gravity model of trade is used in order to find the effects of environmental stringency on the variation in trade flows.
Findings
The study shows that environmental stringency has an important impact on the export of the countries. The impact of the degree of environmental stringency on the exports is significantly negative suggesting an inverse relationship between export values and relative environmental sensitivity performance of the nations.
Originality/value
This study supports the argument that the environmental stringency level differential between developing and developed nations is a crucial criteria in terms of explaining shifts in the trade patterns and international specialization of the countries.
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Khurram Ejaz Chandia, Muhammad Badar Iqbal and Waseem Bahadur
This study aims to analyze the imbalances in the public finance structure of Pakistan’s economy and highlight the need for comprehensive reforms. Specifically, it aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the imbalances in the public finance structure of Pakistan’s economy and highlight the need for comprehensive reforms. Specifically, it aims to contribute to the empirical literature by analyzing the relationship between fiscal vulnerability, financial stress and macroeconomic policies in Pakistan’s economy between 1971 and 2020.
Design/methodology/approach
The study develops an index of fiscal vulnerability, an index of financial stress and an index of macroeconomic policies. The fiscal vulnerability index is based on the patterns of fiscal indicators resulting from past trends of the selected variables in Pakistan’s economy. The financial stress in Pakistan is caused from the financial disorders that are acknowledged in the composite index, which is based on variables with the potential to indicate periods of stress stemming from the foreign exchange market, the securities market and the monetary policy components. The macroeconomic policies index is developed to analyze the mechanism through which fiscal vulnerability and financial stress have influenced macroeconomic policies in Pakistan. The causal association between fiscal vulnerability, financial stress and macroeconomic policies is analyzed using the auto-regressive distributive lags approach.
Findings
There exists a long-run relationship between the three indices, and a bi-directional causality between fiscal vulnerability and macroeconomic policies.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the development of a fiscal monitoring mechanism, which has the basic purpose of analyzing the refinancing risk of public liabilities. Moreover, it focuses on fiscal vulnerability from a macroeconomic perspective. The study tries to develop a framework to assess fiscal vulnerability in light of “The Risk Octagon” theory, which focuses on three risk components: fiscal variables, macroeconomic-disruption-associated shocks and non-fiscal country-specific variables. The initial contribution of this work to the literature is to develop a framework (a fiscal vulnerability index, financial stress index and macroeconomic policies index) for effective and result-oriented macro-fiscal surveillance. Moreover, empirical literature emphasized and advised developing countries to develop their own capacity mechanisms to assess their fiscal vulnerability in light of the IMF guidelines regarding vulnerability assessments. This study thus attempts to fulfill the said gap identified in literature.
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