| Preface | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| The Search for Information in the Online Age | p. 1 |
| What Information Can You Find Online? | p. 1 |
| How Does Information Retrieval Work? | p. 9 |
| Information Seeking | p. 11 |
| Developments in Information Retrieval | p. 14 |
| Problems with Pre-Coordinate Systems | p. 14 |
| Post-Coordinate Retrieval Systems | p. 15 |
| Computer Retrieval Systems | p. 16 |
| Online Retrieval Systems | p. 16 |
| Growth of Online Systems | p. 17 |
| Putting It All Together | p. 19 |
| Going Online | p. 21 |
| Getting Connected | p. 21 |
| Communications Card | p. 22 |
| Modems | p. 22 |
| Telecommunications | p. 23 |
| Communications Software | p. 24 |
| Search Databases | p. 25 |
| What Will Happen in the Future? | p. 26 |
| Database Construction | p. 27 |
| Record Structures | p. 27 |
| Inverted Files | p. 28 |
| Boolean Logic and Boolean Searching | p. 32 |
| Query Indexing | p. 35 |
| Discussion | p. 36 |
| Search Technique | p. 38 |
| Concept Analysis, Choice of Search Terms | p. 38 |
| Building Blocks, Most Specific First | p. 40 |
| Logging-On Protocols and Choosing a File (BEGIN) | p. 40 |
| Choosing Search Terms (SELECT) | p. 43 |
| Viewing Results, TYPE, and Formats | p. 45 |
| Truncation | p. 48 |
| Display Sets | p. 50 |
| Leaving the System (LOGOFF) | p. 50 |
| Conclusion and Chapter Review | p. 51 |
| Controlled Vocabulary Searching | p. 57 |
| Qualifiers (Suffix Searching) | p. 57 |
| EXPAND | p. 58 |
| Why Controlled Vocabulary Searching? | p. 59 |
| Thesaurus Structure and Use | p. 59 |
| Mechanics of Controlled Vocabulary Searching | p. 63 |
| Practice: The Eight-Step Procedure | p. 67 |
| Search Example | p. 70 |
| Free-text Searching | p. 80 |
| Proximity Operators | p. 80 |
| Why Free-Text Searching? | p. 86 |
| Choosing Free-Text Terms | p. 88 |
| Problems with Free-Text Searching: False Drops | p. 88 |
| Good Places to Use Free-Text Searching | p. 89 |
| The Ladder of Specificity: Broadening and Narrowing Searches | p. 89 |
| Search Example | p. 100 |
| The Search Interview | p. 111 |
| Traditional Reference | p. 111 |
| Models of the Reference Process | p. 111 |
| Explaining Online Systems | p. 113 |
| Setting Boundaries | p. 114 |
| Negotiating Search Terms | p. 115 |
| Presenting Search Results | p. 116 |
| Additional Search Features | p. 117 |
| Prefix Codes | p. 117 |
| Limiting | p. 118 |
| Offline Printing | p. 120 |
| Sorting Output | p. 123 |
| Special Formats | p. 124 |
| Access to Documents | p. 128 |
| Multiple File Searching | p. 132 |
| Choosing Which System to Search | p. 132 |
| Choosing Databases | p. 132 |
| DIALINDEX | p. 133 |
| Journal Name Finder | p. 135 |
| Saving Searches | p. 137 |
| OneSearch | p. 141 |
| Problems of Multifile Searching | p. 143 |
| Search Example | p. 144 |
| Searching Other Kinds of Databases: Reference, Directory, Full Text, Citation | p. 149 |
| Reference and Directory Files | p. 149 |
| Full-Text Databases | p. 158 |
| Citation Databases | p. 167 |
| Evaluation | p. 178 |
| The Basic Measures: Precision and Recall | p. 178 |
| The Recall-Precision Trade-Off | p. 179 |
| Other Measures of Performance | p. 180 |
| Self-Evaluation | p. 181 |
| The Other Side: Research and Theoretical Notions of Evaluation | p. 182 |
| Management Issues | p. 184 |
| Setting Up a Search Service | p. 184 |
| Deciding Search Policies | p. 186 |
| Administration of the Search Service | p. 188 |
| Selection and Training of Searchers | p. 189 |
| End-User Search Services | p. 195 |
| Online Public Access Catalogs | p. 195 |
| The Market for Online End-User Systems | p. 196 |
| Simplified Online Systems | p. 196 |
| Multipurpose Systems | p. 197 |
| Gateway Systems | p. 198 |
| Simplified Bibliographic Systems | p. 198 |
| Search Software | p. 200 |
| CD-ROM Search Systems | p. 201 |
| Future Developments | p. 202 |
| The Internet | p. 204 |
| What is the Internet? | p. 204 |
| Resources Available on the Internet | p. 205 |
| Tools | p. 208 |
| Getting On | p. 210 |
| Getting Going | p. 211 |
| Comparison with Traditional Online Searching | p. 211 |
| The Future | p. 213 |
| Index | p. 215 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |