Search Results

The Validity of Health Claims on the World Wide Web: A Case Study of the Herbal Remedy Opuntia

Description: The World Wide Web has become a significant source of medical information for the public, but there is concern that much of the information is inaccurate, misleading, and unsupported by scientific evidence. This study analyzes the validity of health claims on the World Wide Web for the herbal Opuntia using an evidence-based approach, and supports the observation that individuals must critically assess health information in this relatively new medium of communication. A systematic search by mea… more
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Date: May 2000
Creator: Veronin, Michael A.

The Cluster Hypothesis: A Visual/Statistical Analysis

Description: By allowing judgments based on a small number of exemplar documents to be applied to a larger number of unexamined documents, clustered presentation of search results represents an intuitively attractive possibility for reducing the cognitive resource demands on human users of information retrieval systems. However, clustered presentation of search results is sensible only to the extent that naturally occurring similarity relationships among documents correspond to topically coherent clusters. … more
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Date: May 2000
Creator: Sullivan, Terry
open access

Modeling Utilization of Planned Information Technology

Description: Implementations of information technology solutions to address specific information problems are only successful when the technology is utilized. The antecedents of technology use involve user, system, task and organization characteristics as well as externalities which can affect all of these entities. However, measurement of the interaction effects between these entities can act as a proxy for individual attribute values. A model is proposed which based upon evaluation of these interaction ef… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Stettheimer, Timothy Dwight
open access

Identifying At-Risk Students: An Assessment Instrument for Distributed Learning Courses in Higher Education

Description: The current period of rapid technological change, particularly in the area of mediated communication, has combined with new philosophies of education and market forces to bring upheaval to the realm of higher education. Technical capabilities exceed our knowledge of whether expenditures on hardware and software lead to corresponding gains in student learning. Educators do not yet possess sophisticated assessments of what we may be gaining or losing as we widen the scope of distributed learning.… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Osborn, Viola
open access

MEDLINE Metric: A method to assess medical students' MEDLINE search effectiveness

Description: Medical educators advocate the need for medical students to acquire information management skills, including the ability to search the MEDLINE database. There has been no published validated method available to use for assessing medical students' MEDLINE information retrieval skills. This research proposes and evaluates a method, designed as the MEDLINE Metric, for assessing medical students' search skills. MEDLINE Metric consists of: (a) the development, by experts, of realistic clinical scen… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Hannigan, Gale G.
open access

An Experimental Study of Teachers' Verbal and Nonverbal Immediacy, Student Motivation, and Cognitive Learning in Video Instruction

Description: This study used an experimental design and a direct test of recall to provide data about teacher immediacy and student cognitive learning. Four hypotheses and a research question addressed two research problems: first, how verbal and nonverbal immediacy function together and/or separately to enhance learning; and second, how immediacy affects cognitive learning in relation to student motivation. These questions were examined in the context of video instruction to provide insight into distance l… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Witt, Paul L.
open access

Creating a Criterion-Based Information Agent Through Data Mining for Automated Identification of Scholarly Research on the World Wide Web

Description: This dissertation creates an information agent that correctly identifies Web pages containing scholarly research approximately 96% of the time. It does this by analyzing the Web page with a set of criteria, and then uses a classification tree to arrive at a decision. The criteria were gathered from the literature on selecting print and electronic materials for academic libraries. A Delphi study was done with an international panel of librarians to expand and refine the criteria until a list of… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Nicholson, Scott
open access

Korean Studies in North America 1977-1996: A Bibliometric Study

Description: This research is a descriptive bibliometric study of the literature of the field of Korean studies. Its goal is to quantitatively describe the literature and serve as a model for such research in other area studies fields. This study analyzed 193 source articles and 7,166 citations in the articles in four representative Korean and Asian studies journals published in North America from 1977 to 1996. The journals included in this study were Korean Studies (KS), the Journal of Korean Studies (JKS)… more
Date: December 1999
Creator: Chun, Kyungmi
open access

Information Seeking in a Virtual Learning Environment

Description: Duplicating a time series study done by Kuhlthau and associates in 1989, this study examines the applicability of the Information Search Process (ISP) Model in the context of a virtual learning environment. This study confirms that students given an information seeking task in a virtual learning environment do exhibit the stages indicated by the ISP Model. The six-phase ISP Model is shown to be valid for describing the different stages of cognitive, affective, and physical tasks individuals pr… more
Date: August 1999
Creator: Byron, Suzanne M.
open access

A Personal Documenation System for Scholars: A Tool for Thinking

Description: This exploratory research focused on a problem stated years ago by Vannevar Bush: "The problem is how creative men think, and what can be done to help them think." The study explored the scholarly work process and the use of computer tools to augment thinking. Based on a review of several related literatures, a framework of 7 major categories and 28 subcategories of scholarly thinking was proposed. The literature was used to predict problems scholars have in organizing their information, potent… more
Date: December 1999
Creator: Burkett, Leslie Stewart
open access

A Theory for the Measurement of Internet Information Retrieval

Description: The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a measurement model for Internet information retrieval strategy performance evaluation whose theoretical basis is a modification of the classical measurement model embodied in the Cranfield studies and their progeny. Though not the first, the Cranfield studies were the most influential of the early evaluation experiments. The general problem with this model was and continues to be the subjectivity of the concept of relevance. In cyberspace, … more
Date: May 1999
Creator: MacCall, Steven Leonard

The Effects of Task-Based Documentation Versus Online Help Menu Documentation on the Acceptance of Information Technology

Description: The objectives of this study were (1) to identify and describe task-based documentation; (2) to identify and describe any purported changes in users attitudes when IT migration was preceded by task-based documentation; (3) to suggest implications of task-based documentation on users attitude toward IT acceptance. Questionnaires were given to 150 university students. Of these, all 150 students participated in this study. The study determined the following: (1) if favorable pre-implementation att… more
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Date: May 1999
Creator: Bell, Thomas
open access

An Analysis of the Ability of an Instrument to Measure Quality of Library Service and Library Success

Description: This study consisted of an examination of how service quality should be measured within libraries and how library service quality relates to library success. A modified version of the SERVQUAL instrument was evaluated to determine how effectively it measures library service quality. Instruments designed to measure information center success and information system success were evaluated to determine how effectively they measure library success and how they relate to SERVQUAL. A model of library … more
Date: December 1999
Creator: Landrum, Hollis T.
open access

The Second Vatican Council and American Catholic Theological Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Theological Studies: 1940-1995

Description: A descriptive analysis was given of the characteristics of the authors and citations of the articles in the journal Theological Studies from 1940-1995. Data was gathered on the institutional affiliation, geographic location, occupation, and gender and personal characteristics of the author. The citation characteristics were examined for the cited authors, date and age of the citations, format, language, place of publication, and journal titles. These characteristics were compared to the time-pe… more
Date: August 2000
Creator: Phelps, Helen Stegall
open access

An Examination Of The Variation In Information Systems Project Cost Estimates: The Case Of Year 2000 Compliance Projects

Description: The year 2000 (Y2K) problem presented a fortuitous opportunity to explore the relationship between estimated costs of software projects and five cost influence dimensions described by the Year 2000 Enterprise Cost Model (Kappelman, et al., 1998) -- organization, problem, solution, resources, and stage of completion. This research was a field study survey of (Y2K) project managers in industry, government, and education and part of a joint project that began in 1996 between the University of Nort… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Fent, Darla

A Study of Graphically Chosen Features for Representation of TREC Topic-Document Sets

Description: Document representation is important for computer-based text processing. Good document representations must include at least the most salient concepts of the document. Documents exist in a multidimensional space that difficult the identification of what concepts to include. A current problem is to measure the effectiveness of the different strategies that have been proposed to accomplish this task. As a contribution towards this goal, this dissertation studied the visual inter-document relation… more
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Date: May 2000
Creator: Oyarce, Guillermo Alfredo
open access

Are Online Catalogs for Children Giving Them What They Need? Children's Cognitive Development and Information Seeking and Their Impact on Design

Description: Research shows children in an online environment often search by browsing, which relies heavily on recognition and content knowledge, so catalog systems for children must use effective symbols or pictorial representations, which correspond with children's own cognitive schema and level of recognition knowledge. This study was designed to look at the success of young children (ages 5 to 8) in searching 3 online public library catalogs designed for them, and it focused specifically on the pictori… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Creel, Stacy
open access

Use of Instructional Resources by Community Junior College Occupational Instructors

Description: The purpose of this study was to develop information and understanding concerning the use of instructional resources, including library materials, by community junior college vocational-technical instructors. The study sought to determine whether the kinds and amounts of instructional resources used by vocational technical instructors in their courses were related to their: (a) level of formal education, (b) number of courses in Higher Education completed, (c) years of teaching experience, and … more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Lolley, John L.
open access

Evaluation of Text-Based and Image-Based Representations for Moving Image Documents

Description: Document representation is a fundamental concept in information retrieval (IR), and has been relied upon in textual IR systems since the advent of library catalogs. The reliance upon text-based representations of stored information has been perpetuated in conventional systems for the retrieval of moving images as well. Although newer systems have added image-based representations of moving image documents as aids to retrieval, there has been little research examining how humans interpret these … more
Date: August 1997
Creator: Goodrum, Abby A. (Abby Ann)
open access

Library Service in Kuwait: A Survey and Analysis, with Recommendations for Public Library Development

Description: The purpose of this study is to review the development of library service in Kuwait, to survey the current status and problems of the principal types of libraries, and to consider recommendations for the improvement of public libraries since they are relatively less developed and their problems manifest greater immediate needs than other types of libraries. While limited collections, poor services, inadequate staffing and financing are clearly at the root of many library problems in Kuwait, the… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Zehery, Mohamed H.
open access

An Analysis of Factors in the Adoption or Non-Adoption of Videodisc Technology in North American Academic and Special Libraries

Description: The researcher identified 37 independent variables to study their effect on the two dependent variables, the acquisition of videodiscs and the functions for which videodisc programs were acquired. The literature of the applications of videodisc technology in libraries, museums, education and industry, as well as related issues concerning interactive video, were presented in Chapter 2. Using the diffusion of innovation theory of Everett Rogers as a guide, the researcher constructed a questionnai… more
Date: December 1992
Creator: Kelley, Robert E. (Robert Emmett)
open access

An Investigation of Differences in Public Library Usage Patterns Between Gifted Adults and Members of the General Public

Description: The purpose of this research was to isolate the variable giftedness in a pipulation and determine whether that variable could be used as a predictor of public library use. The analysis of data indicated that public library use was higher for the general public than for the gifted adults. There was less variation among the factors of age, level of education, and public library use for the gifted adults than for the general public. Books as a resource for information were mentioned by the general… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Foudray, Rita Catherine Schoch
open access

Shifts of Focus Among Dimensions of User Information Problems as Represented During Interactive Information Retrieval

Description: The goal of this study is to increase understanding of information problems as they are revealed in interactions among users and search intermediaries during information retrieval. Specifically, this study seeks to investigate: (a) how interaction between users and search intermediaries reveals aspects of user information problems; (b) to explore the concept of representation with respect to information problems in interactive information retrieval; and (c) how user and search intermediaries fo… more
Date: May 1998
Creator: Robins, David B. (David Bruce)
open access

The Relationships Among a Reading Guidance Program and the Reading Attitudes, Reading Achievement, and Reading Behavior of Fifth Grade Children in a North Louisiana School

Description: The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not the introduction of a regular librarian-centered reading guidance program as an integral part of the entire school program would improve the reading attitudes and habits of elementary school students and increase the reading achievement scores on a standardized test of elementary school students. In addition, the reading attitudes of students were compared with reading achievement scores to assess any relationship between the two.
Date: August 1986
Creator: Mosley, Mattie Jacks
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