IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v34y1983i5p350-355.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A cluster analysis of retrieval patterns among bibliogrpahic databases

Author

Listed:
  • A Neil Yerkey

Abstract

Searchers of bibliographical databases are faced with a multitude of choices, but very few clues, in developing precise searchy strategies. this sutdy attemps to discover subject patterns and clusters among databases in order to provide clues about differences and similarities among them. Descriptors were taken at random from sev en subject categories in the ERIC thesaurus and used as search terms on Bibliographic Retrieval. Services' CROSS database. The resulting 1,830,312 postings from 54 databases were analyzed in two ways: (1) an Expectation Ratio was computed which allowed ranking databases in order of their relative responses to the subject searches; (2) a cluster analysis was conducted to discover possible subject relationships among databases. The results show five large cclusters: Technology, Life Sciences, Bibliography, Business and Industry, and Education; and 12 well‐defined subclusters. It also shows several dimensions which cut across clusters, such as Research and Social and Economic Enterprise, and Indicates that there are nonobvious similarities and differences among databases which may provide clues to more effective search strategy development.

Suggested Citation

  • A Neil Yerkey, 1983. "A cluster analysis of retrieval patterns among bibliogrpahic databases," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 34(5), pages 350-355, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:34:y:1983:i:5:p:350-355
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.4630340506
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630340506
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.4630340506?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:34:y:1983:i:5:p:350-355. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.