Abstract

Our current research demonstrates that searching the full-text of medical journals consistently yields a much higher percentage of relevant documents than searching their bibliographic surrogates. It also shows that full-text searches result in a significantly greater number of irrelevant items. A steadily increasing number of full-text biomedical databases, in both online and compact disk format, makes an investigation of better searching techniques for these databases an important area of research in medical information science. We propose to undertake such an investigation. By creating and analyzing careful records of file manipulations on two systems which support large databases of full- text biomedical journals, we shall develop searching techniques for eliminating irrelevant documents without significant loss of those which are relevant. We shall pay particular attention to the process of synonym aggregation, so important for retrieval of relevant documents in full-text files. By analyzing techniques successful on one system but not on the other in terms of system software and file structure, we shall delineate those design features most conducive to successful searching in the full-text databases.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01LM004605-03
Application #
3373858
Study Section
(SRC)
Project Start
1987-04-01
Project End
1992-06-30
Budget Start
1989-07-01
Budget End
1990-06-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1989
Total Cost
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
University of Missouri-Columbia
Department
Type
Schools of Library Science
DUNS #
112205955
City
Columbia
State
MO
Country
United States
Zip Code
65211

  Publications

Johnson, E D; McKinin, E J; Sievert, M E et al. (1997) An analysis of objective quality indicators on Year Book citations: implications for MEDLINE searchers. Bull Med Libr Assoc 85:378-84
Sievert, M E; McKinin, E J; Johnson, E D et al. (1996) Beyond relevance--characteristics of key papers for clinicians: an exploratory study in an academic setting. Bull Med Libr Assoc 84:351-8
Johnson, E D; Sievert, M C; McKinin, E J (1995) Retrieving research studies: a comparison of bibliographic and full-text versions of the New England Journal of Medicine. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care :846-50
McKinin, E J; Sievert, M E; Collins, B R (1991) Currency of full-text medical journals: CCML and MEDIS vs. MEDLINE. Bull Med Libr Assoc 79:282-7
Sievert, M C; McKinin, E J; Johnson, E D et al. (1991) Retrieval from full-text medical literature: the dream & the reality. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care :348-52
McKinin, E J; Sievert, M; Johnson, E D et al. (1991) The Medline/full-text research project. J Am Soc Inf Sci 42:297-307