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In vol. 6, 1976, of Advances in Librarianship, I published a review about relevance under the same title, without, of course, “Part I” in the title (Saracevic, 1976). [A substantively similar article was published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (Saracevic, 1975)]. I did not plan then to have another related review 30 years later—but things happen. The 1976 work “attempted to trace the evolution of thinking on relevance, a key notion in information science, [and] to provide a framework within which the widely dissonant ideas on relevance might be interpreted and related to one another” (ibid.: 338).

This paper aims to examine the value relevance of accounting information from an emerging country perspective.

The study adopts Ohlson (1995) Price model to examine the extent to which accounting information explain variation in stock prices of listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

The study reveals that earnings and book value of equity exhibit a positive and significant relationship in stock prices. Earnings explain higher variation in stock market values on the Ghana Stock Exchange compared to book value of equity. The study however finds that despite the introduction of the International Financial Reporting Standards in Ghana, the value relevance of book value and earnings have declined significantly over the period 2005-2014.

A key implication is that regulators of capital markets, standards setters and accounting practitioners need to consistently improve upon the quality of financial reporting disclosures which will boost the confidence of users in their reliance on financial statements as the basis for choosing among alternative use of scarce resources. The authors adopted only the price model in testing the hypotheses. However, to provide comprehensive understanding of value relevance of accounting information, future studies can combine both the price and the return models.

The authors extend prior literature in the Ghanaian context with recent data. Finally, the study adds to the efficient market hypothesis by showing how share prices reflect accounting information produced by Ghanaian firms.

This paper aims to report the results of a study investigating the relevance criteria used by health care professionals when seeking medical images.

Data were collected from 29 participants using a think‐aloud protocol and face‐to‐face interviews and analysed using the Straussian version of grounded theory (GT).

The results show that participants made use of 15 relevance criteria, although they agreed on topicality being the most important. The findings suggest that users apply different criteria in different situations when evaluating the relevancy of medical images.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there have been few studies that investigate relevance judgments for visually orientated documents. Thus, this study helps to contribute to the understanding of medical image resources and the information needs of health care professionals. A clear understanding of the medical image information needs of health care professionals is also vital to the design process and development of medical image retrieval systems.

The objective of this study is to analyse how changes in relevance criteria are related to changes in problem stages during the task performance process. Relevance is understood as a task‐ and process‐oriented user construct. The assessment of relevance is based on both retrieved bibliographical information and the documents acquired and read on the basis of this information. The participants of the study were eleven students who attended a course for one term for preparing a research proposal for the master’s thesis. The students were asked to make an IR search at the beginning, middle and end of the course. Data for describing their understanding of the work task, search goals and tactics as well as relevance assessments were collected during the search sessions. Pre‐ and post‐search interviews were conducted during each session. The students were asked to think aloud during the search session. The transaction logs were captured and the thinking aloud was recorded. Research and search diaries were also collected. The findings support to a certain extent the overall hypotheses that a person’s problem stage during task performance is related to his or her use of relevance criteria in assessing retrieved references and documents. There is a connection between an individual’s changing understanding of his or her task and how the relevance of references and full texts is judged. The more structured the task in the process, the more able the person is to distinguish between relevant and other sources. The relevance criteria of documents changed more than the criteria of references during the process. Moreover, it seems that understanding of topicality varies depending on the phase of the process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how healthcare professionals search for and select the medical images they need within medical settings.

In total, 29 healthcare professionals participated in the study. Using a think‐aloud technique and face‐to‐face interviews, the authors asked participants to explain how they looked for medical images and how they judged the relevancy of retrieved images.

A total of 15 criteria were applied by participants when determining the relevance of medical images in relation to their information needs. Topicality was found to be the primary and most important criterion used by participants.

This study compares the relevance criteria used for medical images with those identified in the literature and highlights six additional criteria that have not been suggested in previous work.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the value relevance of goodwill and its additional aspects during a long-term period in Greece. Furthermore, by implementing two of the most popular value relevance models, the Ohlson’s price and Easton and Harris’ return model, this study examines the impact of goodwill on Greek stock prices from 2007 to 2018, a period of 12 years in which International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are applied. Furthermore, this study analyzes how goodwill’s value relevance changes as it ages and during the Greek debt crisis.

In order to test the value relevance of goodwill we implemented two of the most popular value relevance models, Ohlson’s price and Easton and Harris’ return model. Our sample consists of non-financial listed Greek companies that reported positive goodwill accounting balances on their financial statements during the financial period from 2007 to 2018. Finally, we applied fixed-effects regression model to all equations.

The results provide evidence that the year-end goodwill accounting balance is value relevant, and that the debt crisis has improved goodwill’s information content. Finally, the empirical findings suggest that only current year acquired goodwill is value relevant compared to older goodwill, and therefore, goodwill’s impact on stock prices is decreasing as it ages.

A noteworthy limitation of this study is that it focuses on a specific code-law country Greece, which is a relatively small economy compared to the whole Eurozone. This research contributes to the research literature as it confirms other research findings in the European context and specifically that goodwill based on IFRS is value relevant to financial statement users. Additionally, it investigates for the first time how goodwill was affected by the Greek debt crisis. Finally, it contributes to other researcher’s debate concerning the duration of goodwill’s value relevance in a code law environment such as Greece.

Financial analysts and institutions are provided with more assurance about goodwill’s financial reporting quality to be embedded in the financial evaluation process of corporates. As this research confirms that goodwill should be regarded as an asset, companies should obtain better financial ratings from financial institutions and investors and thus will have better access to equity and debt funding.

We investigate the value relevance of goodwill in Greece during a long-term period of 12 years. Additionally, our study examines the impact of the Greek debt crisis on the information content of goodwill accounting balances and the period during which accumulated goodwill balances and within-year acquired goodwill maintain its value relevance. Our research could assist accounting standard setters such as the International Accounting Standard Board to evaluate the quality of specific standards such as IFRS 3 “Business Combination” and IAS 38 “Impairment of Assets.”

We discuss results from recent relevance research with implications for information professionals. Our studies show that beyond the usual concern with high relevance and non‐relevance judgements, that partially relevant judgements by users are important. We call for the adoption of a more complex view of human relevance judgements in the education and practice of information professionals.

This study aims to investigate the persistence ability of accounting variables, namely, abnormal earnings, book value, accruals and cash flows over a period of time and their valuation relevance in Indian scenario.

The study utilizes the generalized version of the Ohlson model which links market prices with abnormal earnings, book value and earning components (accruals and cash flows). Fixed-effect panel data regression is used to analyze six years of data on the sample units to determine the persistence and valuation relevance.

The findings provide evidence on the construct of persistence and value relevance of earnings and book value of equity in the Indian context. The findings further confirm that investors in India are fixated on earnings and fail to attend separately to the cash flow and accrual components of earnings while undertaking their investment decisions.

The empirical findings of the study will enable the analysts and investors to understand the relevance and persistence of accounting variables in case of an emerging market like India.

The study extends the extant literature on value relevance studies in developed markets to an emerging market like India and enriches it in several ways.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of situational relevance of music information from a performing musician’s point of view by delving into its diverse layers within the context of Doctor of Music students’ information seeking.

Music-related information is approached through six modes that categorize music information sources based on their levels of abstraction. Situational relevance of the modes of music information is examined in relation to the situational requirements of accomplishing a dissertation on music task consisting of both a series of concerts and a written thesis. The empirical material was collected by interviewing Finnish doctoral students in the field of music performance.

A set of situational relevance types related to each mode of music information were identified. As a whole, the differences between the perceived importance of the modes varied a little.

The goal of the present paper is not to create a generalizable list of situational relevance types suggested by modes of music information, but to show that the modes may suggest diverse situational relevance types of their own when evaluated by performing musicians.

The present paper provides a rare account on performing musicians’ vocational and school-related information seeking. For studies of music information retrieval, the present paper offers new contextual facets explaining why diverse music information could be relevant to musicians. For studies of music-related information seeking, the present study offers new insights on why performing musicians have information needs regarding certain types of music information sources.

This study aimed at investigating the value relevance of book value and earnings and the relationship between earnings and operating cash flow of two different financial reporting regimes in Malaysia. A market and nonmarket valuation approaches were utilised for that purpose. The result of market valuation approach of pool sample shows that book values and earnings are value relevant. We also observed that the change in financial reporting regime affects significantly the value relevance of book value and but not earnings. While book value and earnings are value relevant during the MASB period, only book value is value relevance during the FRS period. The result of non‐market valuation approach on the other hand, shows that the change in financial reporting regime has no significant effect on the relationship between earnings and operating cash flow. The result of market valuation approach implicates that the introduction of new or improved standards under FRS regime strengthen the position of book value thus leaving earnings behind in equity valuation. The result of non‐market valuation model implicates that the level of relationship between earnings and operating cash flow persists as long as operating cash flow comprise of cash and cash equivalent components whereas earnings comprise of cash and accruals components. The study contributes to the existing literature in the area of the effect of adoption of FRS on value relevance of accounting numbers in Malaysia.