Virginia Disc 2: Preparing, Presenting and Retrieving MARC StandardLibrary Data on a CDROM

Most of today's commercial information storage systems are stilled based on Boolean queries and inverted files despite the recent advances in information retrieval research. This report discusses the creation on the CDROM publication, named Virginia Disc 2, with the intention of comparing two retrieval systems: Micro-VTLS and Personal Librarian. Micro-VTLS belongs to the class of conventional Boolean systems with inverted index files. Personal Librarian uses newer concepts learned from the Syracuse Information Retrieval Experiment (SIRE). The motivation for comparing the two retrieval approaches is to demonstrate the superiority of newer concepts like term weighting, ranking, and similar measurements employed by Personal Librarian. Virginia Disc 2 uses MARC, a widely accepted standard format for communicating library information. The automation of bibliographic information is a prevalent application in libraries and a CDROM implementation using new information retrieval concepts could generate interest in adopting these new approaches. This report discusses a comparison of Micro-VTLS and Personal Librarian in the areas of retrieval speed, recall and precision. This report also reviews the process of preparing the Virginia Disc 2 CDROM. It discusses the considerations, the preparation effort and the final product of sorting MARC library data on a CDROM.