The database is compiled by the Editor, Liz Rowan, from unpublished reports of research into library and information science (LIS) and related fields such as museums, archives and records management; print and broadcasting media, publishing and book selling; information and communications technologies and telecommunications associated with information storage, preservation, retrieval and dissemination. Project entries are accepted in any major European language, but English is preferred.

The Editor uses a wide range of resources, from contributions by individual researchers, industry and institutional research contacts and regional and national research databases, through to monitoring web sites of academic institutions, professional associations and research funding bodies throughout the world. Project reports range from postgraduate theses/dissertations, practitioner case studies, or university research up to large-scale national and international projects supported by major funding bodies such as the National Science Foundation or the Institute of Museum and Library Services in the USA, the Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK or the Information Society Technologies Programme managed by the Information Society DG of the European Commission. A project entry form in Microsoft Word is available from the Editor.

Access to this database is provided only to customers that subscribe to the print edition of IRWI.

Major areas of coverage include:
• Archives and records management
• Bibliographic records
• Digital, virtual and hybrid libraries
• Document delivery technologies
• Information and communications technologies
• Information and knowledge management
• Information science theory and practice
• Information storage and retrieval
• Information work
• Internet and World Wide Web
• Knowledge and learning
• Libraries and resource centres
• Library and Information science profession
• Library collections and information resources
• Library technology
• Library use and users
• Media, publishing and book selling
• Reading and literacy
• Technical services

1980 - current

Monthly, with approximately 50 records added per update

Over 10,924 records as of December 2007

Information Research Watch International, ISSN 1470-1391. A newsletter published six times a year. Contains two sections, the first, a News Section, contains an editorial written by the Editor, Liz Rowan, an article discussing current LIS research issues by a Researcher in the field and a regular column on practical research methods by David Streatfield. The second, Research Section, contains abstracts of new and ongoing research projects, around 85 project entries per issue. The entries are arranged according to a Subject Headings scheme similar to that used in the print version of LISA: Library & Information Science Abstracts. Project entries are indexed using the LISA thesaurus to produce a Subject Index for each issue. A Researcher Name Index is also included.

The first issue of IRWI was published in March 2000. IRWI incorporates CRLIS: Current Research in Library & Information Science, an abstracting and indexing periodical which was published quarterly, with annual cumulated indexes, from 1983 to 1999.

IRWI uses the LISA thesaurus.

IRWI is a database of unpublished reports of new and ongoing research on LIS and related fields from around the world. This is why IRWI records do not contain fields such as Source, Publication Year or Publication Type that describe traditional publications. Instead you will find details of research projects such as project duration and funding body, researchers and organisations involved (Author field) and a contact for more information. A brief project description is given in the Abstract field and pertinent references to the background or previous research may be cited.

This is very different to LISA which abstracts and indexes the published international literature in library and information science and related disciplines. LISA provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews from 440 periodicals from more than 68 countries and in 20 different languages.

If the purpose of IRWI is to find new and ongoing research and to study trends and track developments in LIS research over 20 years, then LISA can complement this by providing the final published report or peer reviewed article from the international literature.

Are there any similarities between IRWI and LISA? Yes, they are both indexed using the LISA thesaurus, as you will see from the Descriptors field.

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Contributions to IRWI should be sent to the Editor, Liz Rowan
Email: elizabeth.rowan1@btinternet.com
Or to the Editorial Department of the UK office of CSA.

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TI:	Title The word association methodology - a gateway to work-task based retrieval
AU:	Author Lykke Nielsen, Marianne; Royal School of Library and Information Science
CI:	Contact Individual Marianne Lykke Nielsen; Email: mln@db.dk
FS:	Financial Support The Royal School of Library and Information Science
ST:	Status 1 January 1999 - 1 October 2001
AB:	Abstract The aim of the project is to test the effect of user associations on user/system interaction search query formulation. User associations are incorporated in a searching thesaurus, and the objective is to find out how searchers use the thesaurus and, especially, how the associatively derived thesaurus words affect the user's actions and perceptions. The test investigates how the associative words enable a user to formulate his search query, and how the words support a user to generate the appropriate vocabulary to match the system's language. The primary evaluation criteria are usability and user satisfaction, but also relevance-based effectiveness, calculated by precision and recall scores, will be evaluated. However, the main objective is to investigate the searching process and the user behaviour in order to evaluate the support that the associative words provide to the users.
LA:	Language English
CO:	Country of Origin Denmark
DE:	Descriptors Online information retrieval; Searching; Search strategies; Thesauri; User interface; Human-computer interaction; Query formulation; Recall; Precision
QL:	Qualifications PhD
RE:	References 1) Lykke Nielsen, M. Domain analysis, an important part of thesaurus construction. In: 'Proceedings of the 11th. ASIS and T SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop', Chicago, IL., November 12, 2000 (http://uma.information-science.uiowa.edu/sigcr/papers /sigcr00lykke.doc). (2) Lykke Nielsen, M. User associations - do they have any value in a corporate thesaurus? In: 'IV Congreso ISO-Espana EOCONSID 1999', Granada, 22-24 April 1999. (3) Lykke Nielsen, M. and Ingwersen, P. The word association methodology - a gateway to work-task based retrieval. In: 'Final Mira Conference on Information Retrieval Evaluation', 14th - 16th April 1999, Glasgow, Scotland. (4) Lykke Nielsen, M. Future thesauri: what kind of structure and relations do searchers need? In: 'Proceedings 5th Int. ISKO-Conference', Lille, 25-29 August 1998. (5) Lykke Nielsen, M. The Word Association Test in the Methodology of Thesaurus Construction. In: 'Proceedings of the 8th. ASIS SIG /CR Classification Research Workshop', Washington, D.C., November 1-6, 1997.
UD:	Update 20020327
AN:	Accession Number 7943

The following field codes are found in the records of this database. Here they are listed in alphabetical order by two-letter code.

AB = Abstract	KW = Keywords
AN = Accession Number	LA = Language
AU = Author	QL = Qualifications
CI = Contact Individual	RE = References
CO = Country of Origin	ST = Status
DE = Descriptors	TI = Title
FS = Financial Support	UD = Update



Keywords, KW=
In this database a Keywords, KW= , search includes the Title, Abstract, and Descriptor fields.