Search

Human thinking is mostly language-independent. However, human information exchange is massively language dependent, therefore the process of information retrieval is obviously language dependent too. Natural languages are still not commonly used as information retrieval languages, as despite that the idea itself seems to be promising, it poses several serious problems as well. Nevertheless, there have been scientific researches and achievements targeting this domain since the early 90's. Traditional information retrieval languages have rather poor syntactic structure compared to natural languages. Many times, vaguely represented queries can be replied only by „noisy‟ irrelevant answers filled with imperfect information. In this case, progress can only be expected from information retrieval languages with more versatile syntax, which can model not only discrete concepts (or their conjuncts), but their natural language relations as well. The paper is going to outline such a new type of information retrieval language with a better expressive power. The paper shows that there are knowledge representation languages which can faithfully represent the logical fine structure of natural languages, and to which both natural language texts and background knowledge (ontologies, thesauri) can easily (almost automatically) be translated, while the query itself can also be represented by .the same language. A full explanation can be given by a step-by-step tracing of the generated answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research guides represent an important element of the web-based content services offered by academic libraries worldwide. They aim to support library users in getting familiar with professional literature and scientific information sources as well as in making successful searches. The author, working at Library of the Faculties of Law and Economics of the University of Pécs set up a research guide in the field of economics, adapting the service model to local conditions and needs. This paper presents the structure and the content of research guides, describes how such a service can be set up and gives an outline for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]