Providing Government Information on the Internet: Experiences with THOMAS

The THOMAS system is designed to make legislative information available to the general public over the Internet, and can be regarded as a prototypeof a government digitallibrary. As a joint project between the Library of Congress and the University of Massachusetts, THOMAS provides significant opportunities for studying the retrieval and interface techniques that are needed to support effective access to complex information in an Internet-based environment. Preliminary experience with THOMAS indicates that there is significant interest in this type of information, and that queries tend to be shorter than those studied in retrieval evaluations such as TREC. Techniques such as query processing, query expansion, and morphological processing all need to be incorporated and improved.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1995
• Where: DL
• Authors: W. Bruce Croft, Robert Cook, Dean Wilder
• Keywords: Digital Library, DL 1995, Government Digitallibrary, Interface Techniques, Legislative Information