Search results

Number of references containing the input term (set size) is the only feedback the searcher generally receives in most online information retrieval systems. There exist however, methods by which more intelligent feedback could be provided to the searcher. If the retrieved set of documents is not a very large one, computers could easily be made to select from this set the most informative features and feed them back to the terminal. These features can be indexing terms, classification codes, free‐text words, etc. A solution as to how these most informative features can be selected algorithmically in a database is presented here. The method is based on weighting terms properly: the weight depending on term frequency in the retrieved set and in the whole database. The selecting procedure can also be seen as a search for local semantic associations of search terms. What kind of feedback could be received by using this algorithm is simulated by sample searches from Inspec, Compendex, NTIS and Pascal databases. These examples show that useful synonyms for search strategy reformulation can automatically be found by this method.

The article analyzes the development of the Finnish research in library and information science into its present position of high qualitative and quantitative level (in relation to the size of the research community). A number of aspects that may explain the success of the Finnish research are presented: 1) the early academic context, i.e., the establishment of the chair in LIS at the University of Tampere in 1971, 2) the new conception of LIS that emerged in Finland in the early 1980s shifting the attention from institutions into users and actions, 3) internationalization of research including publishing in peer reviewed journals, participating in international conferences, inviting foreign top-researchers into Finland, and organizing international conferences that have become institutionalized (CoLIS and ISIC), and 4) the selection of priority areas for the research effort combined with the concentration of research and doctoral education in research groups.