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This publication follows the tradition of publishing selected papers from Pacific Islands Association of Libraries, Archives and Museums (PIALA) annual conferences. This 13th annual conference was held in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, November 4-6, 2003. The volume begins with a listing of the members of the PIALA 2003 Planning & Steering Committee and PIALA Officers and Executive Board, and the Conference program schedule. Jane Barnwell, Pacific Specialist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, provided the keynote address "Personal Heroes." Presentations included: (1) Kosrae State Entity Report (Aaron Sigrah); (2) Special Libraries in Vanuatu (Betsie Leisale Kaltabang); (3) Secretariat of the Pacific Community Library Activities 2003 (Rachele Oirente); (4) Traditional Island Crops Website & ADAP Program Resources (Eileen Herring); (5) It's Just a Piece of Paper, or Is It: The Story of Records in Micronesia (Tom Beckman); (6) Practical Techniques for Managing Library Electronic Resources (Thomas Hodge); (7) Access to Free Materials: Support for Education Collections with Government Documents (Suzanne T. Bell); (8) Searching EBSCO via PREL (Frandu Liu); and (9) Presenting and Preserving Photographs (Lynn Davis). Includes results of the library professional development survey taken at PIALA 2002 (Nancy Lane) and a report on the project to create and expand digital databases for three collections in the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (Martha Chantiny). The volume ends with an appended conference report, chronology of PIALA conferences (with links to fulltext availability), Hawaii Library Association Resolution on the International Partnership between HLA and PIALA, and PIALA flyer and conference registration materials.

Monolingual and parallel concordancers have both been found to benefit second-language (L2) grammatical development. However, the relative benefits of these two concordancer types remains unclear. The present study compares learning outcomes and learners' perceptions of a monolingual English (Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA) and a French-English parallel concordancer (Tradooit), using verb-preposition collocations as a target feature. Students in an advanced English as a second language (ESL) course completed three concordancing activities where they used either Tradooit (for French L1 speakers) or COCA (for other L1s) to formulate rules for challenging verb-preposition collocations (e.g. "arrive in/at"). Pre- and post-tests showed significant learning gains for both groups, which were maintained in delayed post-tests; however, perception questionnaires showed that Tradooit was perceived as easier and more useful for language learning. We suggest that these differences may be due to the type of cognitive work involved in L1-L2 comparison versus L2 pattern-finding, but that these two processes may both lead to noticing and learning. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED590612.]

The potential of automatically generated indexes for information access has been recognized for several decades, but the quantity of text and the ambiguity of natural language processing have made progress at this task more difficult than was originally foreseen. Recently, a body of work on development of interactive systems to support phrase browsing has begun to emerge. This paper considers two issues related to the use of automatically identified phrases as index terms in a dynamic text browser (DTB), a user-centered system for navigating and browsing index terms: (1) What criteria are useful for assessing the usefulness of automatically identified index terms? (2) Is the quality of the terms identified by automatic indexing such that they provide useful access to document content? The terms this paper focuses on have been identified by LinkIT, a software tool for identifying significant topics in text. Over 90% of the terms identified by LinkIT are coherent and therefore merit inclusion in the dynamic text browser. Terms identified by LinkIT are input to Intell-Index, a prototype DTB that supports interactive navigation of index terms. The distinction between phrasal heads (the most important words in a coherent term) and modifiers serves as the basis for a hierarchical organization of terms. This linguistically motivated structure helps user to efficiently browse and disambiguate terms. The paper conclude that the approach to information access discussed is very promising, and that there is much room for further research. In the meantime, this research is a contribution to the establishment of a solid foundation for assessing the usability of terms in phrase browsing. (Contains 25 references.) (Author/AEF)

This paper discusses the indexing, collection, and maintenance processes, as well as the retrieval interface, to public digital libraries. The paper begins by briefly surveying both Internet technical report collections and World Wide Web search engines. It goes on to describe a prototype digital library, the New Zealand Digital Library for Computer Science Research. The indexing and retrieval mechanism is described, including the full-text index. The types of search provided, the indexes that are needed to support them, and the query interface through which they are made accessible are summarized. The process of building the collection, and the crucial issue of what information is stored centrally and what can remain distributed, are then discussed. The final section summarizes how the information is gathered, considers the factors that limit the size of the library, and reviews future directions for networked digital libraries. Two tables contain information on technical report indexes on the Internet and the current size of the New Zealand Digital Library for Computer Science Research. Four figures illustrate the interface and query page to the digital library, conversion from PostScript (most text missing), the prologue used to extract text from PostScript documents, and the architecture of the digital library. Contains 12 references. (DLS)

Integrating the use of technology-based library resources into the curriculum is necessary for students to acquire vital information-seeking skills. Learning to select and use electronic information sources found on CD-ROM, mainframe computers, and via the Internet enables students to function better in today's information society. This paper explores ways to integrate electronic information resources into course assignments and looks at how electronic sources affect the planning of library instruction and instructional content. The active learning environment created by the use of Austin Peay State University's Library Instruction and Computer Room, equipped with a video networking system and 24 PCs, is addressed. The paper discusses the experiences of students in the Heritage Writing and Speaking course, an interdisciplinary course in which students write papers and learn research skills, including the library's online catalog, InfoTrac's Expanded Academic Index, an index to periodical articles, and World Wide Web searching skills using Netscape. Ways in which students can incorporate electronic information resources into their assignments and a proposed "Pre-Scholar's Workstation" with undergraduate level resources for multiple disciplines and tools to manipulate the electronic information, are also discussed. (Author/SWC)

This exploration of the state of Canadian bibliography in the area of education builds on a paper on the same topic that was delivered at the First National Conference on the State of Canadian Bibliography in 1974, and reviews recommendations made at that time. Information was gathered from key informants, including practitioners and producers of commercial databases. The paper covers four topic areas: (1) progress in Canadian subject bibliography in education, including the impacts of technology on format and content, areas needing research, and suggestions for improving the quality of the education databases; (2) the current state of bibliographic resources in education, including key Canadian bibliographic tools; (3) a review of three 1974 recommendations for educational bibliography and actions taken on these recommendations; and (4) 10 new recommendations that respond to changes in the field. The review of bibliographic tools includes Canadiana and Canadian Education Index (CEI), both of which are available online and in paper copy; ONTERIS, a database that serves as a clearinghouse for a high percentage of educational documents produced in Ontario by education professionals; EDUQ, which is one of Quebec's major bibliographic tools in education; emerging databases that offer bibliographic control of specialized areas within education; bibliographic publications available in paper format; a description of bibliographic control of audiovisual materials; and the state of bibliographic control of government publications. A list of individuals consulted in preparing the paper concludes the report. (Contains 32 references.) (KRN)

This paper summarises part of a longitudinal study to investigate the possibility of establishing an Index that would indicate the appropriate starting point for instruction for students entering high school and reports on the first group of students to sit the Index tests in 2005, comparing the predictive nature of the tests with other state and national tests through correlations. The Index tests focus on the number construct and it is envisaged that by identifying the student's deficiencies or strengths in this construct it may be possible to devise interventionist strategies or extension activities that would increase the probability of success in later years. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.) [For the complete proceedings, "Shaping the Future of Mathematics Education. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (33rd, Freemantle, Western Australia, Australia, July 3-7, 2010)," see ED520764.]

This paper focuses on a user driven approach to improve video indexing. It consists in cumulating the large amount of small, individual efforts done by the users who access information, and to provide a community management mechanism to let users share the elicited knowledge. This technique is currently being developed in the "OPALES" environment and tuned up at the "Institut National de l'Audiovisuel" (INA), a National Video Library in Paris, to increase the value of its patrimonial video archive collections. It relies on a portal providing private workspaces to end users, so that a large part of their work can be shared between them. The effort for interpreting documents is directly done by the expert users who work for their own job on the archives. OPALES provides an original notion of "point of view" to enable the elicitation and the sharing of knowledge between communities of users, without leading to messy structures. The overall result consists in linking exportable private metadata to archive documents and managing the sharing of the elicited knowledge between users' communities. (Contains 22 references.) (Author/AEF)

This paper reviews indexing theory and suggests that information retrieval can be significantly improved by applying basic indexing criteria. Indexing practices are described, including the three main types of indexes: pre-coordinate, post-coordinate, and variants of both. Design features of indexes are summarized, including accuracy, consistency, exhaustivity, and specificity. World Wide Web-based indexing is addressed, focusing on the use of meta tags. Two meta tag schemes currently in use, XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and the Dublin Core Metadata set, are discussed as a means for implementing indexing theory for Web-based documents. A project using the Dublin Core in support of a survey class in educational practice and pedagogy at Northern Illinois University is presented. (Contains 14 references.) (MES)

A number of studies have suggested the potentials of corpus tools in vocabulary learning. However, there are still some concerns. Corpus tools might be too complicated to use; example sentences retrieved from corpus tools might be too difficult to understand; processing large number of sample sentences could be challenging and time-consuming; also, not all English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners know how to induct and deduct information from the concordance lines. So far, not much is known regarding how EFL writers actually perceive such tools as writing aids. To better understand this question, building on the same data set as the one published in 2015 (Lai & Chen, 2015), this study investigated students' perceptions of corpus tools right after they applied such tools to three writing tasks. Four online corpus tools, including monolingual and bilingual concordancers and collocation retrieval systems were provided along with two online dictionaries. After tool-training sections, students performed three timed-writing tasks online in three consecutive months and received individual recall interviews after each writing task. The interviews served as the major source of data. The analysis of the qualitative interview data revealed how the students perceived (1) the corpus tools as writing references, (2) the roles of the authentic example sentences, (3) the bilingual feature of the corpus tools, (4) the presentation of the corpus results, and (5) the features of the collocation retrieval system. Overall, the 14 students greatly valued corpus tools as writing references. The data also revealed how consulting the corpus helped the students to increase their confidence in writing, particularly in terms of wording. By eliciting students' perceptions and comments right after they integrated these tools into their writing tasks, the results obtained revealed not just writer perceptions but also on-site empirical data regarding how corpus tools contribute to EFL writing. [For full proceedings, see ED564162.]

This paper presents the most important concepts and techniques to use in successfully searching the major World Wide Web search engines and directories, explains the basics of how search engines work, and describes what is included in their indexes. Following an introduction that gives an overview of Web directories and search engines, the first section explains features of search engines, including treatment of single words, truncation or wildcards, case sensitivity, and treatment of multi-word queries and phrases. Major search engines and directories are discussed in the second section, including AltaVista, HotBot, WebCrawler, Excite, Magellan, Ultraseek and Ultrasmart by Infoseek, Lycos, Yahoo!, and Cyberhound. The next section covers mega search or parallel search sites, including: ALL-IN-ONE Search Page, CUSI, search.com, MetaCrawler, SavvySearch, and Infomarket Search. The fourth section describes specialized search engines such as a directory of sources for finding e-mail discussion groups, A Business Compass (ABC), 555-1212.com, and Argos. A table contains specific search capabilities, display features, and other special features of the most commonly used search tools. Relevant Web sites are noted throughout. (Contains 30 references.) (DLS)

A project using a computerized concordancing program in combination with a computerized corpus of academic texts to teach academic English is described. It is intended for native speakers and learners of English, and focuses on frequently-used words common to all academic fields. The vocabulary was selected from an academic word list, and consisted of about 250 items used for various functions of academic writing: stating topic; referring to the literature; expressing opinions tentatively; explaining processes used; reporting research of others; linking ideas correctly; and drawing conclusions. The concordancing program was then used to determine frequency of the terms' use. Resulting lists present students with multiple examples of academic vocabulary items in context. Questions concerning word use accompany the lists. Initial student response to the materials indicates that because the mode of presentation is new, some guidelines for use are needed; students should be instructed to: (1) look at the words surrounding the key term, thinking of meaning; (2) familiarize themselves with patterns of language surrounding the term to answer the questions; (3) practice key terms without referring to the concordance; and (4) create their own writing using the terms to fulfill a particular writing function. Contains 11 references. (MSE)

The growth in the size of the Internet has resulted in much effort being spent on indexing its contents. The most popular solutions are created by automatic methods, and although offering impressive coverage, they are disappointing where precision of meaning is required. Alternative services created by human beings arrange and index resources according to concept and offer more relevant retrieval, but cannot hope to achieve 100% coverage. New developments are imminent which may support both the automated and non-automated approaches, and vastly improve the quality of Internet metadata. This paper demonstrates that the task of locating information on the Internet has not been and will not be accomplished by the use of sheer computing power alone. It reviews the topic of metadata creation, with special reference to the OMNI project (Organizing Medical Networked Information) and describes two encouraging new initiatives: PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) and the Dublin Core Metadata Set/Warwick Framework. All users need improved search tools with which to navigate the Internet. The answers to the present dilemma will be based on more than one tool, on both human intervention and intelligent automated data gathering. Metadata, as exemplified by the old catalog card, is set to become a key concept in the future of the new information world. (Contains 19 references.) (Author/SWC)

This paper presents findings from a study that developed a model process and created a Quality of Life-Value-Added Index for Education. The model helps communities assess the value-added characteristics of education by providing the methods necessary to evaluate the value added of their schools. "Value-added" refers to the value that schools add to the entire community. The study utilized the Delphi technique to develop a profile list of priority values. A list of 100 variables was presented to a blue-ribbon panel comprised of teachers, principals, parents, professors, students, and administrators throughout Mississippi. Participants ranked the variables that contributed to the quality of life in a community. A three-round Delphi process and factor analysis reduced the original list to 13 variables, which were ranked in order of importance. After modification, the index can be used to supplement the America Goals 2000 Community Report Card. (LMI)

This paper discusses various techniques that scientists and other professionals can use to keep current in their field despite the large amount of available information, such as consulting abstracts, indexes, reviews, and catalogues. It also examines specific language patterns that are used in the sciences to produce synthesis and abridgement, based upon a study of the language used in mathematics, chemistry, and electricity. Eight linguistic elements of synthesis (ES) were identified: (1) Complex Nominals, such as compound nouns; (2) Formulaic Expressions; (3) Nominalizations, which often refer to physical or mental processes; (4) Non-Finite Forms, such as participles and infinitives; (5) Prepositional Phrases; (6) Vocabulary 3, which refer to events, ideation/concept, and text; (7) Anaphor/Deixis, which refer to actions and entities; and (8) Ellipsis. The usage, frequency, and roles of ES are then examined. (MDM)

Discussion of the use of computerized concordancers (computer software packages that enable large quantities of text to be searched for all occurrences of a particular lexical item) focuses on their potential as a tool for students to use in learning a second language. In considering the pedagogical value of such tools, three areas are considered. The first is the capability of the concordancer to scan text and make comparisons, isolate collocations, sort occurrences alphabetically, compile word lists, and count word occurrences. The second is the source of electronic text, its preparation for analysis, and selection of software. Several specific programs are compared. The third area for consideration is the type of activities students might undertake with a concordancer. It is recommended that such activities encourage the student to take control of his own learning through purposeful interaction with texts, with the teacher in the role of facilitator of student-initiated research. Possible activities include comparison of the student's errors in written work with examples from authentic text, analysis of collocations, differences in register, support for composition exercises, and investigation of an author's vocabulary usage patterns. A list of related addresses is included. Contains 35 references. (MSE)

The value and role of concordancers (simple computer programs that can quickly analyze electronic texts to find occurrences of a given word, part of a word, or phrase and display it within its immediate context) in secondary school English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching are examined. First, their use in higher education is discussed, including their role in syllabus design, evaluation of existing course materials, preparation of print instructional materials, and classroom use by students. The kind of language corpus needed for secondary school instruction is then considered, and factors, both instructional and technical, in compilation of an appropriate corpus are noted. Finally, advantages and constraints of use in secondary level instruction are outlined. The primary advantage is seen as the concordancer's potential role in student empowerment and as a tool for autonomous and advanced learning. Constraints identified include cost, limited space for computers, classroom time limitations, and need for change in student and teacher attitudes toward computers. It is concluded that concordancers can be useful at the secondary school level, with careful planning and appropriate teacher training. Contains 26 references. (MSE)

School accountability decisions based on standardized tests hinge on the degree of alignment of the test with a state's standards. Yet no established criteria were available for judging strength of alignment. Previous studies of alignment among tests, standards, and teachers' instruction have yielded mixed results that are difficult to interpret and compare across studies. This simulation study determined critical values for Porter's (2002) alignment index, suitable for hypothesis testing at alpha levels of 0.05 and 0.10. The critical values will be useful to researchers or policymakers who seek to judge strength of alignment among standards, assessments, and instruction. The presentation will also describe directions for future research in establishing objective criteria for the interpretation of alignment indices. (Contains 1 footnote, 9 tables, and 2 figures.) [This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation.]