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Belkin and Robertson (1976a) reflected on the ethical implications of theoretical research in information science and warned that there was potential for abuse of knowledge gained by undertaking such research and applying it to information systems. In particular, they identified the domains of advertising and political propaganda that posed particular problems. The purpose of this literature review is to revisit these ideas in the light of recent events in global information systems that demonstrate that their fears were justified.

The authors revisit the theory in information science that Belkin and Robertson used to build their argument, together with the discussion on ethics that resulted from this work in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The authors then review recent literature in the field of information systems, specifically information retrieval, social media and recommendation systems that highlight the problems identified by Belkin and Robertson.

Information science theories have been used in conjunction with empirical evidence gathered from user interactions that have been detrimental to both individuals and society. It is argued in the paper that the information science and systems communities should find ways to return control to the user wherever possible, and the ways to achieve this are considered.

The ethical issues identified require a multidisciplinary approach with research in information science, computer science, information systems, business, sociology, psychology, journalism, government and politics, etc. required. This is too large a scope to deal with in a literature review, and we focus only on the design and implementation of information systems (Zimmer, 2008a) through an information science and information systems perspective.

The authors argue that information systems such as search technologies, social media applications and recommendation systems should be designed with the recipient of the information in mind (Paisley and Parker, 1965), not the sender of that information.

Information systems designed ethically and with users in mind will go some way to addressing the ill effects typified by the problems for individuals and society evident in global information systems.

The authors synthesize the evidence from the literature to provide potential technological solutions to the ethical issues identified, with a set of recommendations to information systems designers and implementers.

This paper is concerned with recent work in the theory of information retrieval. More particularly, it is concerned with theories which tackle the problem of retrieval performance, in a sense which will be explained. The aim is not an exhaustive survey of such work; rather it is an analysis and synthesis of those contributions which I feel to be important or find interesting.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

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.

This paper provides an introduction to the use of n‐grams in textual information systems, where an n‐gram is a string of n, usually adjacent, characters extracted from a section of continuous text. Applications that can be implemented efficiently and effectively using sets of n‐grams include spelling error detection and correction, query expansion, information retrieval with serial, inverted and signature files, dictionary look‐up, text compression, and language identification.

This review reports on the current state and the potential of tools and systems designed to aid online searching, referred to here as online searching aids. Intermediary mechanisms are examined in terms of the two stage model, i.e. end‐user, intermediary, ‘raw database’, and different forms of user — system interaction are discussed. The evolution of the terminology of online searching aids is presented with special emphasis on the expert/non‐expert division. Terms defined include gateways, front‐end systems, intermediary systems and post‐processing. The alternative configurations that such systems can have and the approaches to the design of the user interface are discussed. The review then analyses the functions of online searching aids, i.e. logon procedures, access to hosts, help features, search formulation, query reformulation, database selection, uploading, downloading and post‐processing. Costs are then briefly examined. The review concludes by looking at future trends following recent developments in computer science and elsewhere. Distributed expert based information systems (debis), the standard generalised mark‐up language (SGML), the client‐server model, object‐orientation and parallel processing are expected to influence, if they have not done so already, the design and implementation of future online searching aids.

In beginning its work at the end of the 1950s, the Aslib Research and Development Department inevitably faced the task of identifying the most significant problems for investigation, at the same time having the need to establish appropriate experimental techniques. Most of the projects undertaken since that time have dealt with current problems, and to an extent the advent of new technologies and techniques to the information world (mechanization in the 'sixties, management studies in the early 'seventies, on‐line working and publication problems in more recent years) is reflected in the work reported below. What follows is a complete bibliography of publications by members of the Department from its formation up to the end of 1977.

The progress of parallel computing in Information Retrieval (IR) is reviewed. In particular we stress the importance of the motivation in using parallel computing for text retrieval. We analyse parallel IR systems using a classification defined by Rasmussen and describe some parallel IR systems. We give a description of the retrieval models used in parallel information processing. We describe areas of research which we believe are needed.

A probabilistic model previously used in relevance feedback is adapted for use in automatic indexing of documents (in the sense of imitating human indexers). The model fits with previous work in this area (the ‘adhesion coefficient’ method), in effect merely suggesting a different way of arriving at the adhesion coefficients. Methods for the application of the model are proposed. The independence assumptions used in the model are interpreted, and the possibility of a dependence model is discussed.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.