This paper was written for my Media & Conflict Module (cross-programme) under the guidance of my in-exile Pakistani lecture, Mr Javed Nazir.

1. War In Chechnya 

The fall of the Soviet Union brings about the power struggle and vacuum throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia. Separatists in
Chechnya, aware of Russian weakness back then, took advantage of the situation by wanting to separate more territory from the Russia and thus creating “an Islamic republic from the black to the Caspian seas”.
Russia claimed that the mission of its arms forces during the first war was to restore constitutional order while the second war was a counter-terrorist operation against the Chechens.  

1.1 The First Chechen War 

Chechens experienced the most savage wars of the 20^th century and have the misfortune to experienced not one but many wars with
Russia. The first war, fought from 1994 to 1996, resulted in Chechnya’s independence from Russia which was however not recognized byRussia. Boris Yeltsin, Russia president at that point of time, refused to recognize Chechnya as an independent country and invaded Chechnya to assert the Russian authority.  The war started with civil wars between the Chechen entities of separatists and Dudaev. Dudaev was a puppet for the Russian elites to transform Chechnya into a port for their illegal activities such as money laundering and narcotics. The Chechen militants were not in support of Dudaev but found themselves drawn to the conflict when the Russian forces were harsh towards the Chechens and after a full-scale intervention by the Russian forces, the war turned from a civil war to war between
Russia and Chechnya. The civil war was in fact a cover up to the illegal traces and the Russian troops were brought in to disarm the warring Chechen entities.  The conflict however, is not one of ethnicity initially but is a struggle between the mafia and the political clans.  

A bloody war ensues with Russia withdrawal and defeated by the Chechen guerilla. On 31^st Aug 1996, Yeltsin’s national security adviser Alexander Lebed and the Chechen-elected president Aslan Maskhadov signed the Khasav-Yurt Accord for ceasefire and withdrawal of both forces from Grozny. The official figures of lives lost stands at more than 30,000 for Chechens and 5,300 for the Russian forces.  

1.2 The Second Chechen War 

The second Chechen War started in 1999; Vladimir Putin became the Russian president the same year while the war was still ongoing.
Russia objectives back then were to subdue the militants in Chechnya. It all started when the Chechen militants penetrated Dangestani villages and proclaimed an Islamic state over that part of Dangestani. The Russian authorities managed to stir the nationalist feelings of the Dangestani people and the Chechens fighters were seen as invaders.  

At around the same time, the blowing up of apartment blocks in Moscow created a climate of fear towards the Chechens, although their involvement remains uncertain. The Russian Authorities took this opportunity to confront the Chechen fighters for their terrorists’ activities and involvements. However, analysts noted that the Russian attack is a mask to reverse the earlier humiliating defeat in the first war. Russian authorities present the war as an “anti-terrorist operation” breeding on their soil and managed to prevent the breakaway of
Chechnya from the Russian federation.  

The aggravation caused by the Russian forces led to the high number of deaths for the Chechen civilians and mass migration of the Chechen people from the rocket bombardments. The ongoing conflict led to 70 percent (more then 60,000) of the dwellings in Chechnya destroyed with most the assets of the nation and its people looted. More than 90 percent of the Chechens are now unemployed and a whole generation of men (some 200,000) grown up without formal education which led to them knowing only the skill to wage an armed conflict.  

2.1 Human Rights Violations 

The conflict in Chechnya has been characterized by widespread and credible reports that Russian forces have been responsible for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including “disappearances”, extrajudicial executions and torture, including rape.  

During the first conflict, the Russian forces bombed a huge number of Chechens in the densely populated
Grozny to exterminate the militants and the occupants of
Grozny, who are mostly not supportive of Dudaev. The bombings led to 300,000 inhabitants fleeing Grozny to escape the rocket bombardments.  

The first war turned the international opinion against
Russia mainly because of the bombings in
Grozny and the human rights violations stories splashes across the international media.                 

2.2 Russia Media Control 

The change in public opinion between the first and the second conflict is due to the Russian authorities’ successful propaganda. In the second Chechen war, the Russian Information Centre was set up as the main node for reports and news on the conflict.

Putin started his public relations campaign by replacing key positions in the media industry with his political aides and has managed to promote and control the media towards adopting a pro-government stance. 

The centre screened reports to be disseminated and selected “loyal” journalist to publish their articles. Other journalists needed prior screening and are accompanied by a military escort when entering the conflict zone.
Russia dailies, Kommersant, claimed to have obtained a document that outlined the tightly military controlled of the mass media. The newspaper reported on the Russian Information Center document instructing the military spokesmen and journalists on the terms to be used must when reporting Chechnya. The federal forces and troops should be called “subdivisions and units of the Russian Federation Armed Forces and the Ministry of Internal Affairs Internal Troops” while the Chechens are labeled “separatist” and “terrorist units”.

During the first war, Russian authorities denied any media contact with the soldiers and leaders and thus no information or explanations were available from the Russian side. The Chechens however, invited the press coverage given and soon, images of the defeated and dead Russian solders were splattered on the media.

The Russian authorities are also linked to killings and kidnappings of journalists who published stories not in their favor. Andrei Babitsky, Russian journalist famous for his
Chechnya war coverage, is kidnapped by the Russian military. Fresh Russian authorities’ atrocities against the media include the barring of reporters from the U.S ABC network because of their airing of an interview with Chechen rebel Shamil Basayev.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, virtually all Russian media have demonized Chechens and highlighted Russian military successes throughout the second conflict. The Russian media also downplayed the destruction of villages and cities, the plight of refugees, and allegations of brutality and torture by Russian troops.

The mood of the Russian citizens changed dramatically in the Second War due to the major public relations campaigning by the authorities. While the Russian were indifferent to the ongoing war in
Chechnya during the first conflict, the second conflict sees a massive support for the Russian authorities to exert their authority. In a  survey conducted by Russian independent research centre, Russian Public Opinion and Market Research, it was found that 62.5% of the public supported the eradication of the Chechen resistance in November 1999 compare with 3.2% in October 1995. 

The second military conflict was accompanied by the anti-Chechen campaign in Russian mass media and most of the reports highlighted the terrorists connections of the Chechens and soon, the whole of
Chechnya are suspects of being Jihadists.   

2.3 Media Myths

The tight Russian control on news leaving the state led to a few media myths and beliefs among the international population. The myths are:

1. The Chechen Conflicts are Separatist Conflicts

The Russian forces were initially involved to weed out the political turmoil and civil strife during the first Chechen conflict. The Russian forces were brought in after the invasion of Dagestan by the Chechen militants in the second conflict.

2. The Chechen Conflict is Unjustified

The conventional view of the conflict is that it’s a Russian effort to suppress separatists and international interventions are uncalled for.

3. The Chechen Conflict is due to historical grievances

Although the Chechens and the Russian have been at war many times before and many are pointing to the theory of grievances due to the brutal deportation of the Chechen people to Central Asia in 1944, it only remains as a source of deep resentment between the entities.

4. Chechens are responsible for Russian’s apartment blast

There’s has been no clear connection between the Chechens involvement and the blast which killed 94 people in their sleep. 

5. The Chechen conflicts resulted in growing Islamic extremism in the region.

Although the Russian authorities characterized the second conflict as a crusade against the International Islamism and terrorism, it should be noted that the conflict started because of economic devastation, social dislocation and widespread desperation. 

3.1 Western Media

The western media portrays the conflict in Chechnya as a “war of national liberation” and justified the cause of the Chechen rebels for independence. Most of the articles on the Chechens killings are being explained as a response to the aggravation caused by the Russian forces.

It was reported the West supported the Chechnya war. In 1995, the International Monetary Fund gave a loan worth $6.8 million to Russia. It should also be noted that from the U.S lobbying, the European Council admits Russia into its organization while Turkey, were denied membership for a long time. The western worlds supported Russia but prefer to keep their support under wraps. The US and Russia has deep forged ties with the US looking up to Russia for their natural reserves such as gas and oil.  

3.2 European Media

Review of European media article on the conflict especially French Le Monde on the conflict shown that the European government is critical of the Russian military and do not trust the Russian government. Le monde even addressed the issue of labeling the war in Chechnya as terrorism activities is a fluke and alleged that the anti-terrorist operation is a disguise for ethic cleansing orders which is organized by the Russian authorities.  

In a Le Monde editorial on 28 April 2002, the paper went further in bashing the United Nations for letting
Russia escape any condemnation on the human rights violations. The editorial brought up the issue on the unfairness of the United Nations committee members.  The members brought up the “recency issue” to justify their vote to let  Russia off while Israel is being condemned for their massive manslaughter of the Palestinian people.  

On December 1994, 52 heads of state were in Budapest debating European crisis prevention matter while the images of Russian forces bombings at the Grozny airport were shown worldwide. Despite a few concerns, the debate ensues and none of the images of the Grozny tempted the heads of state to intervene. The western countries prefer to keep their hands out of the domestic conflict and were afraid of being on the Russian’s opposite side.  

The second conflict however began few months after the war in Kosovo and the Europeans were then sympathizing with the victims of the war. These analogies were used by the French philosophers, Andre Glicksman and Bernard –Henry Levy, to define the actions of the Russian forces as “genocide”. The French assumed that the war will be solved with Chechnya gaining independence and the intervention of international forces in the Caucasus.  

The international community did not do much to stop the Chechen wars. Countries such as the United States,France and Germany expressed concerns on the civilians’ deaths in Chechnya but were not eager to get involved and persuade Russia to end the war. The war between Chechens and the Russians are considered a domestic issue and thus no international intervention was given. The U.S has no vested interest in engaging the Russian military and thus is not eager to intervene. After 9/11, the western authorities only addressed the
Chechnya because of the number of Chechens participating in the act of terrorism such as bombings local places.  

4. Former Yugoslavia Conflict History 

Former Yugoslavia (literally known as Land of the
South Slavs), was a nation with complex history and experienced large numbers of killings on its land during the 90s. The former Yugoslavia, a south-eastern European country in the Balkans, was a nation of diverse mixture of people, languages, religions and culture which was created after 40 years of cold war.  

The Ottoman Turks weakened prowess gave way to the independence of Serbia. However not all was well with
Serbia and the South Slav peoples. The Slovenian and Croatian, proposed for a South Slav kingdom within the Austrian Empire. The South Slavs wanted to regain their lost freedom under the various empires and free themselves from tyrannies and dictatorships.  The idea of the kingdom under Austrian sponsorship fizzled on the collapse of Austria-Hungary. 

The Serbs wanted a fully independent South Slav state. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire by the end of the century is a prelude to the conflict by other ambitious nations to have a hold in the empire’s remaining Balkan lands. The consequence of the conflict is the elimination of the European order in World War I.  

The elements which branch the hatred of split into a civil war generate from the unrest in the first Yugoslavia, the civil war during the Second World War, the idea of “Greater Serbia” and the Balkan adaptations of Pan-Slavism. The country, already invaded by the Austrian and the Ottoman Empire by the early nineteenth century, disintegrated into eight federal units in the nineties.Apart Serbia, Kosovo and Vojvodina were two autonomous provinces and another of the six republics are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. 

During World War II, the Axis Powers occupied Yugoslavia and split it up. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi puppet-state and German troops occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as part of Serbia and Slovenia. Other parts of the country were occupied by Bulgaria,Hungary and Italy. The Independent State of Croatia created concentration camps for anti-fascists, communists, Serbs, Gypsies and Jews. A large number of people, mostly Serbs, were executed in these camps.  The Axis was expelled from
Yugoslavia in 1945 and a new constitution modeled after the Soviet Union, Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, was formed in 1946.
Yugoslavia after World War II consisted of pre-war Serbian domination population and population exploited by the Nazis during the war. The Nazis used Croatian fascism for barbarous acts against the Serbs and generated anti-Serbs sentiments amongst the Kosovar. 

4.2 Albanians and the Bosnian Muslim population. 

Ethnic Tensions in Yugoslavia grew after the death of Josip Broz Tito, the Communist dictator who reunited
Yugoslavia and imprisoned nationalist after the World War II. Tito died on 4 May 1980 after 37 years of ruling
Yugoslavia and having a rotating presidency among
Yugoslavia’s ethnicities. Slobodan Milosevic, a Montenegrin Serb, rose to power and become the president of Serbia by 1990. Milosevic wanted a “Greater Serbia”, mirroring the pre-1974 Serbian sovereignty and inciting Serb nationalism.  The notions for a “Greater Serbia” drove Milosevic to committing major crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide that were initiated and carried out by him and his forces.

The greatest conflicts on the former Yugoslavia took place between 1991 and 2001, with its roots in various underlying political, economic and cultural problems ethnic and religious tensions. The war   was characterized by brutal ethnic conflicts between the populations. On one side, The Serbs were fighting against the Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians; and on the other side the Bosniaks and Croats were fighting against the Albanians.  

The vital key in attaining Milosevic’s objectives was the Serbian Media itself and their campaign to generate national hysteria on the “Others”. At least three years before the war started, a war psychosis had already been spread to the Serbs population that they were under siege and should exterminate the “Others”   

4.3 Bosnia Conflict  

The conflict in Bosnia from 1992 to 1996 was the first ever ethnic cleansing the world witnessed after the holocaust in World War II. Reports of death camps, rapes and killings were rampant.

The declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in April 1992 caused the immediate insurgent of the Bosnian Serb population against the Muslim and Croatian population. The initial cooperation of Muslims and the Croatians was a tactical alliance for outvoting the Serbs at the independence referendum. The conflict between Muslims and Croats broke out in 1993 with complex collaborations. The Muslims and Serbs were cooperating against the Croats in Herzegovina but the Serbs and the Muslim were fighting each other in the north-west Bosnia. In central Bosnia, the Croats and the Serbs were fighting against the Muslims.  

While the Serbs were receiving military support from Serbia and the Yugoslavia army, the Croatian army aided the Bosnia Croatians population. Serbian forces began firing and taking siege of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia in late 1992. The United Nations (UN) and Security Council actively protected the Bosnian Muslims. The February 1994 Serb attack in a Sarajevo market which killed 68 civilians had North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) issuing the ultimatum of air strikes on the Serbs if they do not heed the warning of withdrawal of the heavy weapons. Bosnian Muslims and the Croatians ended the conflict between them and were working together again against the Serbs by March 1994.  

The Bosnian Serb attacked a safe haven of Srebrenica in 1995 and massacred thousands of Muslim males in the presence of the Dutch UN groups. NATO reacted with air strikes against the Serbs and enabling territorial gains to the Bosnian Muslim and the Croats.  

The 1995 Daytona peace accord, signed in Paris, separated the region into two entities, a Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb Republic.  

5.1 Human Rights Violations 

The Serbs forces were reported to be involved with systematic rapes of the Bosnian women. The women were kept in concentration camps to prevent abortions and the official number of women rapes stands at 20,000 which may be higher in reality. Mass killing were also reported and the Bosnian Serbs even attacked the civilian targets in the safe area guarded by international forces.  

5.2 Manipulation of the media by Milosevic 

Despite the intense media coverage on the Yugoslav wars in the western world, understanding of the conflict among the public was poor due to the complex make-up of ethnicities in Yugoslavia.  

The media in every states of the former Yugoslavia were independently fighting with one another and instead of highlighting the wrongdoings, the individual media advocated killings. Basic-Hrvatin, in her study on the
Yugoslavia’s internal media, identifies three central levels of influence which were used to support the nationalist sentiments:

• The local media is responsible for the key role in shaping national and public memory.
• The local television defined a specific understanding of nation (e.g. “The Greater Serbia”).
• The local media centralized systems of spinning the news create a “nationalization of the public sphere”.

Media reports are a factor of conflict due to the illustration and creation “the exclusion of the other”. The television broadcasts of individual nations trumpeted their own causes and conceptions of the nation were only comprehensive to members of the community who share a common background identity.  The local media was found to be using historical narratives to highlights the danger of the other ethnicities. Serb and Croat television effectively emphasized the differences and advocates the separation of the multi-ethnic community as well as exaggerating incompatible concepts which led to conflict. Tight control by the Serbian authorities on the media ensure that the public approved the “extreme nationalist policies” 

According to Mark Thompson, a leading media analyst and Yugoslavia expert, Serbia used “fascist” models of media representations to dehumanize anyone who supported the “Others”. The National Radio and Television Broadcaster spewed ethnic hatred during the wars and was a tool for Milosevic policies for ethnic hatred, crisis escalation, and war with a media campaign. Milosevic’s media campaign was able to reach the Serbian people who were overseas and able to portray strength in unity among the Serbs. One of the absurd articles on the Serbs’ media was the reports of Serb babies being fed to lions in the
Sarajevo zoo.   

Milosevic’s propaganda on the ethnic hatred in the former Yugoslavia provided a framework for understanding the violent expulsions of non-Serbs from their homes. Milosevic’s rhetoric also led to inaction from international landscape because it was seen as a natural consequence of the Yugoslav culture to embroiled in ethnic conflicts.

The absence of physical differences between the former
Yugoslavia people helps legitimized resistance to intervention from the world’s political players. Reports in the United States perpetuated that there were no real national interests in the Balkans and by recasting the crisis in American terms; journalists avoided the grappling of the complex Balkan politics and Serbian atrocities.  

Milosevic not only control the news on the media but also painted false picture to the Serbian people rejecting the Western peacekeeping efforts.   

5.3 European Media coverage of the Bosnian War 

The Bosnian war received lukewarm attention initially but received full media attention after the discovery of detention camps in Bosnia. Roy Gutman , a Newsday reporter, was the first few Western journalists visiting the war torn area and started publishing the news on detention camps for Muslims beginning 19 July 1992(“The road to ‘ethnic cleansing’”, 1996).  Images of emaciated men behind barb wires reminded the people of the holocaust atrocities during World War II and the world soon took notice and is eager to stop the ethnic cleansing.  

Media and policymakers of Europe and America were contemplating between interventions or watching it from behind their desks. In Europe, it was found that the four major Dutch newspapers published over twice the number of articles during August 1992 than the monthly average in 1993[1](Ruigok, Ridder, & Scholten, 2005).  Most of the printed articles then had a tone of moral indignation about the Serbian atrocities and columnists as well as editorial boards felt that military intervention was inevitable. 

Journalist David Reiff argued that “it really was the television cameras and not NATO, let alone United Nations , that saved Sarajevo after the massacre in the Central Market in early February 1994”(Spencer, 2005). Reiff also highlighted that the objectives of the western media were to have an informed society which would eventually demands actions on their governments to prevent the massacres and rapes of the Bosnian Muslims. 

The Dutch government had been active in developing diplomatic relations in the former Yugoslavia since becoming the chairman of the European Community in 1991. In a study done by the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation it was concluded that in 1993, a combination of humanitarian motivation and political ambition led the Dutch government involvement which could be use to show it’s worth the Dutch prestige around the world (2002). The Dutch government stance affected the Dutch reporters in reporting the Bosnian wars. The Dutch journalists kept on reporting the news on the conflict even though the compassion fatigue was clearly visible. The Serbs are portrayed as the bad guys while the Muslims are portrayed as victims. Dutch articles are found to be quoting Dutch politicians when describing the above mentioned images.  

5.4 The US media Coverage 

The fall of Srebrenica, in the east of Bosnia, was an eminent importance to the US media. The Washington Post and the New York Times had 70 articles on Bosnia between 11 and 18 July 19995 with at least one article was run on the front page everyday.  Channel News Network (CNN) ran 84 news segments on Bosnia over an eight day period. The media coverage focused mainly on the refugees and the Western policy of “doing too little too late”.  The US media were using emotive descriptors, such as “mass of wailing humanity”, to highlight the plight of the refugees. According to Vershbow and Lake, the fall of Srebrenica and the wide media coverage provide US the opportunity “to forge consensus against allies” for a more forceful stance in Bosnia.  

As a whole, the Bosnian War was reported as a battle between the good and evil and atrocities are reported on the media without checking or gathering official confirmations. Roy Gutman, a Newsday journalist, admitted that he failed to check the authenticity of the Serbian death camps in his “rush to tell the world the story”.  

6 Conclusions 

The media can break or make a person and it is a common knowledge that political organization thrive on their media power to succeed. Media play a crucial role in representing conflicts. Politics and media can never be separated with the politicians making use of the media for their agenda and the media making use of the other to sell their papers. Objectivity, factuality and truth-speaking from the journalists are face with severe pressures when reporting conflicts.  The media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war. Winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield. Although the aspiration of many journalists is to provide an impartial and balanced assessment of conflict, it is inevitable side one party over another. The Russian government tight media control can be seen as a success and effective on their part.  The second conflict was fought with a major public relations campaign such that it influences the public opinions of the Russian. Other atrocities by the manipulated Russian media include the demonization of the Chechens and the downplaying of the destructions by the Russian troops. Russian authorities have effectively taken the Chechen war off the political agenda as international issues and constant projection of the Chechens as terrorists in the media wards of international interventions.   

The only news available to the International readers have been screened by the Russian Authorities and is somehow lopsided as it only presents one side of the stories. Attempts by international journalists to go over the conflict zone has been stop and warned by the Russian authorities as life–endangering.  

However, the French media has been active in calling for international interventions and their own French government to do something on “the war in their own soil”. All along, the French media is against the war and is argues that the war is Putin’s farce to relived them of the humiliation faced during the first conflict.  

In fact, the French media has been justifying the actions of the Chechens as a defense against ethnic cleansing. The French media highlighted that the lost lives of the Chechens is reflected as terrorists fatalities by the Russian authorities and are not keeping quite on their unhappiness when the United Nations Council decided to let Russia off without any condemnation.  

Western Media are known to portray the conflicts as the conflict for independence by the Chechens with explanations of the Chechen attack of the Russian forces as a reaction to being aggravated. Although the media is somehow sympathetic to the plight of the Chechen, the U.S government was not involved promoting interventions. The likely reason for this could be the deep seated interest in the Russian natural reserves and not wanting to be on the other side of the Russian authorities.  

The media in the Bosnian conflict provides a leverage of political pressure onto other political bystanders for actions. Despite the intense media coverage on the Yugoslav wars in the international front, understanding of the conflict among the public is poor due to the complex history and ethnicities of the media.  

With each state having a number of media outlets, there is competition to support their own state and trumpet their own cause. The media outlets itself are having a war in advocating the killings instead of highlighting the killings.   

The local media in Yugoslavia, especially Serbs, were a tool for obtaining public support. The media in Serbia plays the central role in the creation of the war. The media success of Slobodan Milosevic was propogating the rhetoric that the Yugoslavs had been fighting one another since centuries back .

The internal media of Milosevic were found to influence its public to support the nationalist sentiments. This includes shaping the national and public memory, defining a specific understanding of the nation which is “the Greater Serbia” and the illustration and creation “the exclusion of the other”.  

In the Bosnian war, news images conjured up the sympathy for the Bosnians and resulted in international interventions. Dutch papers reported extensively on the conflict and categorized the Serbs as the perpetrators while the Bosnian Muslims are defenseless victims. The western media are also responsible in reporting the atrocities but is is found that the media stance is not reflective of its government.   

7. References

The road to ‘ethnic cleansing’. (1996, 11 Jun). The Wall Street Journal, p. A14.

Andrei Krasnov and Viktor Smirnov, “From the Russian Information Bureau,” Kommersant, 16 October 1999, p. 3 as reported in The Current Digest, Vol 51, No 42, p. 17, 18.

Bildt, C. (1998). Peace journey : the struggle for peace in Bosnia.London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Gray, E. (2000). Putin’s Media War. Retrieved 1 Mar, 2007, from http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2000/Russia_analysis_March00/Russia_analysis_march00.html

Heyman, J. (1999, 29 Jul). What Balkan People Need Is Rant-Free Radio Broadcasting International Herald Tribune.

Hunt, S. (2004). This was not our war : Bosnian women reclaiming the peace.Durham: Duke University Press.

Lee, R. A. (2002). New and Recent Wars & Conflicts of the World. Retrieved 15 Mar, 2007, from http://www.historyguy.com/new_and_recent_conflicts.html

McLaughlin, G. (2002). The war correspondent.
London ;Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press.

Rex, J. (1997). Ethnicity reader : nationalism, multiculturalism and migration: Polity.

Robinson, P. (2002). The CNN effect : the myth of news, foreign policy, and intervention.
London ;New York: Routledge.

Ruigok, N., Ridder, J. A. d., & Scholten, O. (2005). News Coverage of the Bosnian War in Dutch Newspaper.New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ruigrok, N. (2005). Journalism of attachment : Dutch newspapers during the Bosnian war.
Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.

Sakwa, R. (2005).Chechnya : from past to future.London: Anthem.

Savich, C. K. (2002). The Origins and Causes of the Bosnian Civil War 1992-1995. Retrieved 1 Apr, 2007, from http://www.rastko.org.yu/istorija/iii/cksavich-originsofwar.html#_Toc2952303

Spencer, G. (2005). The media and peace : from
Vietnam to the ‘War on terror’.
Basingstoke England ;New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Thomas, T. L. (2000). Manipulating The Mass Consciousness: Russian And Chechen “Information War” Tactics In The 2nd Chechen-Russian Conflict Retrieved 1 Apr, 2007, from http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/documents/chechiw.htm

Thompson, Mark (1994) Forging War: the media Bosnia-Hercegovina.
London: Article19V. Mukomel and M. Olkot, et al., Armed International and Regional Conflicts: Human Losses and Economic Damage. Social Consequences. Identity and Conflicts in Post-Soviet States (Russian) (Moscow: Carnegie Center, 1997), p.301.

[1] 579 articles in August 1992 and 277 average articles in 1993.

This is my term paper for my Info Mgt Module

1. Introduction to Information Science in Intelligence Agencies

2.1.1 Information-as-process

2.1.2 Information-as-knowledge

2.1.3 Information-as-thing

2.2 Intelligence

2.3 Difference between Information and Intelligence

3.3 Processing

3.4 Analysis and Production

3.5 Dissemination

4 Information Gathering from Sources

5 Finished Intelligence

5.1 Current Intelligence

5.2 Estimative intelligence

5.3 Warning Intelligence

5.4 Research Intelligence

5.5 Scientific and Technical Intelligence

6 Conclusion

7 Recommendations

Burke, C. B. (1994). Information and secrecy : Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the other Memex. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.

Chen, H. (2006). Intelligence and security informatics for international security : information sharing and data mining. New York: Springer.

Intelligence in an insecure world. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. (2004). The 9/11 Commission report : final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized ed.). New York ; London: W. W. Norton.

Terrorism and organized hate crime : intelligence gathering, analysis, and investigations. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.

The intelligent(ce) island : surveillance and social control in Singapore. Unpublished Thesis M A –Queen’s University 1996.

This report was submitted for my Info Mgt Module. Again the professor limit it to 4 pages.

The proliferation of the Web technologies has changed the way people communicate and interact with one another. Technologies, such as intranet, ride on the interactive power of the web to connect people, support online discussion and collaboration, knowledge sharing and lifelong learning (Al-Hawamdeh & Hart, 2002). Online communities have been known to use textual blogs and audio podcasts in sharing knowledge but vlogs1, an online journal which contains video files, have been catching on. Currently, there are many personal vlogs available and Podtech, a media marketing organization, hosted the first annual awards in 2006 for videobloggers to recognize the vloggers efforts. The categories for the Vloggies Awards include the Best Vlog and Corporate/Organization Vlog. coBRANDIT, a video production and consulting firm which is listed as one of the finalists for the Corporate/Organization Vlog , uses vlog as to document their work and research.

^{2 Also known as chatterbox, shoutbox,sayboard}

Tagboards2 , which functions as bulletin boards, can be embedded on vlog’s page to support small discussions among employees. Vlogs with comments-enabled entries, allows users to share their views and new ideas might be generated from these informal online asynchronous discussions. Users are also presented with the options to forward the vlog entries to their emails for their reference or to their colleagues whom they think might be interested in the entries.

2. Brown, J. S. (1999). Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2007, from http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/seelybrown/seelybrown4.html

3. Bryant, S. C. (2006).Videoblogging for dummies. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

4. David, K. (2006). Prime Time for Vlogs? Business 2.0, 7(4), 24.

5. Heather Green in New, Y. (2005). ONLINE VIDEO: THE SEQUEL. Business Week(3915), 40.

6. McGregor, J. (2004). It’s a Blog World After All. Retrieved 21 Feb, 2007, from http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/81/blog.html

7. Michael, B. (2006). INSIDE INFORMATION: Agencies turn to vlogs to engage employees globally.PRweek, 9(44), 15.8. Microsoft Corporation. (2004). Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation

9. Microsoft CEO Summit 2004. Retrieved 15 Feb, 2007, from http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2004/05-20CEOsummit.aspx

10. Nair, B. (2004).Employee communication. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic.

11. NEWS;, B. (2005). Apple unveils video-playing iPod Retrieved 2 Mar, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4336194.stm

13. Podtech.net. (2006). The Vloggies. Retrieved 20 Feb, 2007, from http://www.vloggiessf.com

14. Yarmosh, K. (2005). Why Web 2.0 Matters to your Business – The Web 2.0 Watermill. Retrieved 28 Feb, 2007, from http://www.technosight.com/why-web-20-matters-to-your-business-the-web-20-watermill/

This paper was written for my HCI module. I co-wrote it with my classmate, Norhanita.I wote chapters 2 and 3. We joined forces for the conclusions and recommendations part..

2.2 Seamless Paradigm in Classroom setting

4 Issues in an AR system

This paper was written for my Information Management Module. The professor requested that the report should not exceed 4 Pages.

                                                           Nora

Singapore, a republic with the Westminster based governmental model, has the lowest level of “Bureaucracy and Red Tape” and the study done by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, in June 2006, revealed that Singapore is one of the five countries in the world with lowest corruption. This fact ensures that all business dealings will be documented and transparent thus avoiding time and money wasted on unnecessary dealings.

Singapore, earned the 2nd “Most Technologically Ready Nation in Asia” behind Japan, in The Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007. 54.8% of the population subscribed to broadband services. This fact is useful for the educational centre to launch an e-learning portal. It is also feasible and economical to market the courses on the internet with the ease of launching and adoption of the latest technology available to deliver the courses.

The four modes of environmental scanning were fully utilized and formal search is done mostly to obtain official statistics and reports. The formal search is also done on the World Wide Web through the local government’s online database. Undirected viewing occurs frequently when the information is the least expected. One to one communication enables faster dissemination of information and is most likely to involve undirected viewing. Conditioned viewing involves exposing oneself to the selected environment with no expectations such as viewing of the various Islamic educational centres and the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore website. The personal call to The Muslim Converts’ Association of Singapore is an example of informal search , with the intention of getting information which are not easily available.

The informal sources such as personal calls can lead to early indications of threats and opportunities and organizations scan the external environment to make necessary adjustments and decisions. The information gathered during environment scanning on the economy, demographics, political, economical, competitors and customers is encouraging for launching a local English Islamic Educational Centre.

Abdul Monir, Y. (1999). Islamic financial services and products. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM).

Clark, A. (2000). Organisations, competition and the business environment. Harlow, England: Financial Times Prentice Hall.

D&B (Singapore) Pte Ltd (2006). SMEs Get Public and Private Sector Assistance [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 28 Jan 2007 from http://www.marketinfo.sg/articles/D&B/SMEGetPublicAndPrivateSectorAssistance.html#.

Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura. (2006). ASATIZAH RECOGNITION SCHEME. Retrieved 22 Jan, 2007, from http://www.muis.gov.sg/cms/services/Islamic.aspx?id=506

MCYS. (2007). Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, . Retrieved 27 Jan, 2007, from https://app.mcys.gov.sg/web/home_main.asp

Middle East Media & Research Institute. (2001). Muslim American Leaders: A Wave of Conversion to Islam in the U.S. Following September 11. Special Dispatch Series – No. 301 Retrieved 21 Jan, 2007, from http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sd&ID=SP30101

Middleton, M. R., & Charles Sturt University. Centre for Information Studies. (2002). Information management : a consolidation of operations, analysis and strategy. Wagga Wagga, N.S.W.: Centre for Information Studies Charles Sturt University.

MTI. (2007). Ministry of Trade & Industry,. Retrieved 28 Jan, 2007, from http://app.mti.gov.sg/default.asp?id=1

National Security Coordination Centre. (2004). Fight Against Terror:SINGAPORE’S NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY. Retrieved 20 Jan, 2007, from http://www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/resources/e-books/ebklist.-imindefPars-0004-DownloadFile.tmp/FightAgainstTerror.pdf

Singapore Department of Statistics. (2006). General Household Survey 2005 Statistical Release 1: Socio-Demographic and Economic Characteristics. Retrieved. from http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pdtsvc/pubn/ghsr1.html.

SMECentral. (2007). The Business Gateway for Small and Medium Enterprise. Retrieved 19 Jan, 2007, from http://www.espioneer.com/smecentral/

The Singapore High Commission. (2006). Harmonious Relations Between Religions. Singapore News.

This paper was written for the Information Sources & Searcing Module. The Professor requested that the students do not exceed 2 pages for the report.

Jihad is a virtuous struggle towards a praiseworthy end as defined by Islam. The classical Muslims scholars theorised that there are two basic categories of jihad; the spiritual Jihad, which is termed as the greater Jihad, and the physical Jihad. The spiritual Jihad is to overcome one’s own evil inclinations and the physical Jihad is to defend or propagate Islam where physical aggression should only be the last resort.

Apart from the conservatives who still believed in the spiritual aspects of Jihad, the concepts of contemporary Jihad varies among individuals. The modernist Muslims opined that Jihad is not to propagate Islam or subjugate unbelievers; it is only waged in self-defence. The fundamentalists and radicals have derogatory stance on Jihad which the world is exposed to currently. Jihad, to them, is a struggle if necessary, with the use of violence to spread their brand of Islam towards Muslims and non-Muslims.

The information from Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World was cross-checked with sources mentioned earlier and no discrepancies were found. Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, published in 2003, is a two volumes publication containing short definitions, biographies and essays on Islam. Entries are accompanied with cross-references, citations and the name of the contributor. Indexes list is at the last pages of the encyclopedia which won the 2005 RUSA Best Reference Sources and New York Library Best of Reference 2004.The publisher, MacMillan Reference USA, has been printing encyclopedias since 1980’s.

Sohail H. Hasmi, the contributor of the 3 pages Jihad article, is an associate professor of International Relations on the Alumnae Foundation at Mount Holyoke College. The academic specializes in Religions and Politics and has written a number of publications on Islam. The article construes the term “Jihad” and the history of the Islamic struggle spiritually and physically. Sohail H. Hasmi appears unbiased as he explained that the “holy war” the world is exposed now is dictated by the fundamentalist ideologies and terrorists who justify the killings, but is condemned by the mainstream scholars. General public will get an overview of Jihad from the article and academics can refer further to the citations. Therefore, it can be concluded that “Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World” is a good encyclopedia as a reference source for meeting the authority, recency and objectivity criteria.

References

Hashmi, S. (2003). Jihad. In Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (Vol. 1, pp. 377-379). USA: Macmillan Reference.

Khan, A. (2003). Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Book). Journal of World History, 14(1), 93. Retrieved Wednesday, October 11, 2006 from the Academic Search Premier database.

Long, J.M. (2003). Jihad. In Encyclopedia of Religious Freedom (pp. 241-246). New York: Routledge.

Mount Holyoke College. (2006, January). Sohail Hashmi. Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/misc/profile/shashmi.shtml

Peters, R. (2001). Jihad. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (pp. 369-373). USA: Oxford University Press Inc.

van Slooten, P. (2005). Dispelling Myths About Islam and Jihad. Peace Review, 17(2/3), 289-294. Retrieved Wednesday, October 11, 2006 from the Academic Search Premier database

This was supposed to be a pair work but my partner only did a review for Literature Online. The other 2 databases that were evaluated were Emerald Fulltext and ProQuest Digital Dissertations. The comparison table is not shown fully here.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTIONA database is an accumulation of information that is stored over a certain period of time and it is accessible in a computer-readable format. A computer processes data for many years using different types of storage formats. The most cost-saving way of storing data is by using some form of magnetic disc, as it has the ability to keep large amount of data while enabling user fast access to any particular information.There are some databases that store information for purposes that are practical, for example, information that are collected for making statistical analysis such as the country census and textual data for information retrieval for example, technical or literary abstracts, and government statutory or other law and regulations.The amount of funding involved in setting up the database is large; therefore, it is expected for the information to remain useful in the long term. A database may cater to the various needs and different group of users. For example, Literature Online is used by a majority students and researchers who are involved in literary studies. On the other hand, Emerald Fulltext caters more for articles in the management area.The purpose of this paper is to compare the search capabilities of three different databases, namely, ProQuest Digital Dissertations, Emerald Fulltext and Literature Online. The evaluation is based on the interface and accessibility, search functions and capabilities and display and output. There is also comparison table to provide a clearer view of the differences between the three databases.CHAPTER 2 PROQUEST DIGITAL DISSERTATIONSInterfaceThe ProQuest Digital Dissertations (Dissertation Abstracts Online) is an electronic database of over 2 million entries compiled since 1861 of theses and dissertations from U.S. and Europe. The bare and simple user interface database covered publications from different parts of the world such as Australia, New Zealand & even Hong Kong. Apart from Digital Dissertations, the U.S-based ProQuest previously known as University Microfilms (UMI); has other database such as ProQuest Medical Library, ProQuest Historical Newspapers and ProQuest Historical Annual Reports.The online database provides basic and advance field-specific search interface. The basic search interface has three access points for search inputs with the option to narrow the results by the date of degree awarded and searching within the pull-down menu indexes, from a list of 11 given fields, such as author and subject. The search results are further refined by specifying another search within the results.The Advanced interface search enables the users to search for documents on the “Build Query Box” by adding terms on the access points and using the available 11 index fields of an article to refine search. The search history at the bottom of the advanced search interface enables combining the previous search terms with the current search.The “Help” section offers user help topics write-up, namely “Search Basics” and “Field-Specific Search Tips”. The “Help” section is available by clicking on “HELP” found on the top right hand side of the webpage. The online database does not provide a thesaurus service for the users.

AccessibilityThe ProQuest Digital Dissertations enables user access to bibliographic citations and abstracts, along with the author & university records, via the internet at http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/. The online database can be subscribed by libraries as well as University institutions however, individual user subscription is not allowed. Non-subscribers can only access the current one year record and have no access to citations and abstract beyond the one year. There is unlimited number of concurrent users.The database provides 24 page previews of the doctoral dissertation and master theses, from 1997 onwards, with the option of ordering online in print or PDF format; however, for theses and dissertations beyond 1997, registered users can only view the citations and abstracts from 1861. ProQuest Digital Dissertations is regularly updated with 60,000 dissertations and 12,000 theses annually.Users may navigate the database by the hyperlink tags on every page and may begin searching for dissertations and theses by browsing through the listed subjects via the “Browse” hypertext link or input the search terms into the search fields. The “Results List” hyperlink tag on the homepage displays the last search results. Search Functions & CapabilitiesThe Boolean operators use are ‘AND’, ‘OR’, and ‘NOT’. ‘AND’ operator is used between searchable terms to retrieved documents that contains all the terms listed. ‘OR’ operator is used to specify the retrieved documents to contain either search terms listed. ‘NOT’ operator, or ‘NOT’, retrieves documents after eliminating the second term of search terms but not the first term.The ProQuest Digital Dissertations supported nested search function by searching for terms in the inner most brackets and uses ‘?’ as a truncation at the end of a word to find the variations of a common root word. Phrase searching is available in both the basic and advanced search interface. The words of a phrase are separated by spaces to retrieve the documents that contain the exact phrase.Apart from Boolean operators, the online database uses ‘W/n’ and ‘PRE/n’ proximity operators to specify the sequence order of search terms. The ‘W/n’ operator searches for documents that contains the first term within n characters of the second term in any order. The ‘PRE/n’ operator retrieves documents that contains the first term within n characters to the left of the second term. The n in both operators specify as the number of characters between two terms. As with most databases, the ProQuest Digital Dissertations ignored ‘stop words’ to improve the search response time. The ‘stop words’ are common words that are not included in the database index.BrowsingThe “Browse” function, below the search hyperlink bar at the homepage Proquest Digital Dissertations enables the user to view the articles by “Subject”. There are 5 index fields, such as “Education” and “Social Sciences”, under “The Humanities and Social Sciences” subject header and another 5 index fields, such as “Psychology” and “Health Sciences”, under “The Sciences and Engineering” subject header. The subject indexes will lead to another page for the user to specify the desired type of language and literature and finally search for the requirements given.Display & Output ServicesOn the search results set window, ProQuest Digital Dissertations display the Title, Author, Degree type, School, Date, Pages and the publication number of a record. Users have the options to further view the citation and abstract of a record from 1861 onwards and the 24 page previews, displayed in thumbnail images first, of the gif file from 1997 onwards. The abstract of a record is in the htm file format and the full text of a record from 1997 is in the PDF file format.The “Marked List” is the user’s selected list of citations which can be access at a later time to print, email and download. The abstracts htm file and the full-text PDF file (from 1997 onwards) are sent to a valid email address email or alternate access from another given url, after the user verified a pin number given through email. Users can print and download citation or citation + abstract of a record directly from the internet browser. The 24 page previews are printable and downloadable direct from the intent browser. The search results may be sort by Degree date in descending order, Author in ascending order and Title in ascending order and is listed at 20 results per page. The current Proquest Digital Dissertations does not provide email alert services and cross references from other database.Proquest Digital Dissertations has migrated to a platform called ProQuest Digital Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) in July 2006. PQDT enables graduate research across the various ProQuest’s platforms which include other ProQuest databases. The new PQDT will support email alert services, downloading the PDF file format directly and browsing of records by subject indexing & institution indexing.CHAPTER 3 EMERALD FULLTEXTInterfaceEmerald (Electronic Management Research Library Database) Fulltext, a United Kingdom-based publisher online database launched in 1996, contains over 42,000 articles mainly on management disciplines. The cluttered interface database provides full text articles from more than 100 Emerald journals; however the Emerald Fulltext is using Emerald Insight as the delivery platform and Emerald Insight integrates all electronic Emerald Journals search interface in one.

The online database provides “Quick Search” and “Advanced Search” functions. The “Quick Search” function enable the user to input term/terms in the single search box and the option to simply check the individual boxes for “Phrase” , “Exact match” and “Truncation” searching. Furthermore, users can also check the individual boxes to search for match in different parts of an article such as “All Fields”, “Journal Title”, “Company Name”, “Reference Number”, and “Abstract”, “Author”, “Keywords” and “Article Title”within”All Content or My Subscribed Content. The “Advanced Search” contains 3 search boxes for inputs by the user and options to select from 10 searchable fields. The “Advanced Search” enables user to select article types for searching within “All Content” or “My Subscribed Content”.Emerald Fulltext has a function called “Save Search” which enables user to add the search to the saved search list and “Modify Search” function to amend the search criteria by selecting the appropriate searchable fields. The “Search In Results” function enables users to refine their search. By default, the search terms are automatically saved and are displayed at the bottom of the search window for later usage.Users can get help topics such as FAQs and Online Demonstration in Emerald Help by the “Help” hyperlink found at the top of the webpage. Unlike most online databases, Emerald Full text does not include a thesaurus.AccessibilityThe Emerald Fulltext (http://www.emeraldinsight.com) enables online user access to latest research and findings on the subscribed journals such as European Journal of Marketing, The TQM magazine and Management Decision from a pool of more than 100 Emerald journals. Emerald Fulltext does not provide free source to unregistered users; however users whose institutions are interested to subscribe, may sign up for a month free trial for Emerald Fulltext. . The online database can only be subscribed by libraries and institutions and there is unlimited number of concurrent users. The online database provides user the option to search or browse through the listed journals and subjects; accessing full text articles from 1994 and abstracts from 1989. The hyperlink tags available on every page provide easy navigation to other parts of the online database. Emerald Fulltext is regularly updated and is updated monthly with approximately 500 items.Search Functions & CapabilitiesEmerald Fulltext uses ‘AND’, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’ Boolean operators in upper case. As with most databases, ‘AND’ operator is to search for articles containing all search terms, ‘OR’ operator is for searching articles containing either search terms and ‘NOT’ operator retrieves articles containing the first term and not the second term of search terms. Emerald Fulltext uses the colon ” ” for phrase searching and the parentheses ( ) to search for all the characters in the brackets. The database will search for terms in the parentheses ( ) first before continuing with other operators. The online database uses “*” as a wildcard to perform multiple character search, in any place and “?” to perform single character wildcard, in any place. The database supported nested search function by searching for terms in the inner most parentheses. Emerald Fulltext ignored ‘stop words’ to improve the search response time. BrowsingThe “Browse” function, beside the search field at the homepage of Emerald Insight, enables the user to view the journal according to “Journal Title” and “Subject”. In “Journal Title” browsing, users can click on the initial letter of a journal if user knows what they are looking for. The “Subject” browse lists all available subjects for users to click and display the results. The results will display all the available journals with the ASSN number and the dates of article added to Emerald Fulltext. Display & Output ServicesEmerald Fulltext is able to display the full documents that are from 1994 and only display abstracts from 1989 onwards with bibliographic information such as title, author, abstract, article URL, etc, etc. The search results window of Emerald Fulltext lists the results with brief information of the title, author, type of journal, year, volume, issue, document format and abstract for documents from 1989. Documents dating from 1994 onwards consist of additional information fields such as the purpose, design/methodology/approach, findings, originality/value of the documents are display in the result window. Users can view the results in 10, 25 or 50 per page. The full article are accessible from the results page by clicking on the hyperlink to launch the article, dating from 1994 onwards, on another browser in html or PDF format; however, only the html format are available for the abstract view of the articles dating from 1989 onwardsThe results can also be viewed by its types; namely, “Articles”, “Abstracts & Reviews”, “Emerald Site” and “Site Content”. The default search results are displayed in the “Articles” view as only articles published in Emerald journals collections are listed. The “Abstract & Reviews” view lists the search results from 5 Emerald databases and abstract. “Emerald Site” view lists any search term that coincides with the content on the Emerald website. “Other Content” view lists all other Emerald content such as book reviews and interviews.The search result listings can be forwarded to an email address by the “E-mail this page” link found in the search window. The search results can be marked in “My List” , which enables user to access the list at a later time, and enables saving, printing, and downloading (in ASCII) and emailing the search result listings. Individual articles and abstracts/citations are printed directly from the separate browser launched after selecting the documents format.The “Sort By” function on the result list enables the user to view the results according to the relevance of the article with the input search terms. The search results can also be display according to the latest article and newest article. Searchable terms are searched across the Fulltext website and therefore, the results will also list the cross-references from other Emerald journals.There are several alert services available to the user e.g. the database will notify the user with email alert if the user subscribed to the author alert services and there’s an article written by the chosen author. The user can also set the maximum number of alerts to be notified each week.

CHAPTER 4 LITERATURE ONLINEInterfaceLiterature Online is a United Kingdom based online resource for literary research that was first launched in 1996. It contains over one third of a million collections of English and American poetry, drama and prose, and over 192 full-text journals and other key works and references.Literature Online has a bare interface that is easy to navigate via clear hyperlinks to various parts of the database. The bare intuitive interface is easy for the amateur user who may use the “Quick Search” function that is on the left-hand navigation bar of every page to get directly to the information required. “Quick Search” searches the Literature Online indexes, and enable user to do various searches such as search an author’s name, a work title and author name plus work title. The truncation character “*” is allowed in “Quick Search”. “Search Text” is for user to search for a quotation in the poetry, prose and drama database.Durable URLs make it simple for book-marking Author and Full Text pages. This provides access to durable links of the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections from course pages as well as other web sites. There are user-friendly tables of content for all materials found on the database. The latest version Literature Online, Third Edition had been enhanced to facilitate research, teaching and learning. Literature Online is a dynamic database with regular monthly updates of new journals, biographies and other works.AccessibilityLiterature Online (http://lion.chadwyck.com) provides user access to a wide range of journal articles and critical essays, dictionaries, encyclopaedias and other reference works to assist user find meaning of literary terms and terminology. Biographies provide updated summary of recent critical approaches and user is able to follow links to bibliographies of relevant writers. A limit is set on the number of users per institution which means user will be declined access to the database when the designated number of users has been reached. There are a limited number of four concurrent users each time.Search Functions & CapabilitiesThe “Help” function allows user to get more information about any of the features available in Literature Online. If user clicks on the “Help” link on any page, it will open in a popup window. “Search Authors” is for user to search authors by name, or more specific like authors who belonged to a particular literary period or literary movement. Using one or any combination of the search boxes such as Find Author(s), Living in the year(s), Gender, Nationality, Ethnicity, Literary Movement or Literary Period will help user to retrieve information about an author. In short, both single and multi search box searches can be done in the database.Literature Online allows user to combine search terms using Boolean operators “AND”, “OR” and “NOT”. In addition, the searches can be refined by using two proximity operators “NEAR” and “FBY” (Followed BY) to look for words that are close to each other. NEAR operator is for user to narrow the search for terms that have a specified distance between each other and in any other. For example, law NEAR male or wild NEAR animal.Truncation operators or wildcard characters “*” (asterisk) and “?” (question mark) may be used to find occurrences of words that share the same opening characters but have different endings. For example, educat* may be used for education and educate.The “Search History” page records all the searches that were run during the current session except for “Quick Searches”. User can rerun searches, refine or combine them with other searches or remove them from user’s record.

BrowsingThe “Reference Shelf” contains a drop-down list that has the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Webster’s Dictionary, Shakespeare Glossary, The King James Bible and Combine Search.User is able to view full text article by going into the “Full-Text Journals” link, save document in PDF format and via email as well as the option to print the article.The “Information Centre” provides user with news on recent and upcoming updates to Literature Online, resources, content and editorial policy and most importantly contact details. “What’s New?” page show recent updates and what to expect in the near future. The “Individual Collections” link enables user to access any individual literary databases that comes with Literature Online subscription.“Search Criticism & Reference” allows user to come up with a list of information written about an author or their literary works that include references to various articles, journals and dissertations related resources, major references and relevant web links. Literature Online provides information available in the MHRA’s ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature), the MLS International Bibliography, major reference works and on the World Wide Web. These sources can be in the form of citations, full text, article pages images or links to relevant websites.Display & Output ServicesThe “Marked List” page lists the bibliographic records user has selected and added from the “List of Result” pages during the immediate session. It allows user to create a list of records selected from searches in the current session, view the full text, email or print the list, remove records from the list or save records to “My Archive” if user want to keep a record for searches later.User can email the current list of selected records to himself or others. He also has the option to print the current list. There is a limit of 500 records to each list of selected records.“User Statistics” is useful to retrieve the time of day, sessions, searches, hits, searches returning no hits, full texts accessed, full record accessed and users denied access.“Poets on Screen” allows user to access to the multimedia collection available on Literature Online. It features filmed readings by poets and major authors analysing their works and those of their predecessors.Being a dynamic database, Literature Online is constantly growing as new material gets licensed and approved to be stored in digital format. It has an impressive library of primary works that has been selected by academics that are experts in the field covering all literary periods and genres. Literature Online also benefits from all the features associated with Chadwyck-Healey, Proquest Information and learning’s specialist humanities imprint. Some of these features include editorial quality, detailed coverage and inclusiveness, textual accuracy and detailed SGML coding and manual indexing.

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONSAll the three databases evaluated provide easy navigation to and from individual pages however, only Proquest Digital Dissertations and Literature Online provides user-friendly search and simple interface. Although each database caters for different information retrieval, all of them are updated regularly. Literature Online provides access to only a few concurrent users thus it will be difficult to access the database during peak periods such as exams, unlike the other two databases which provides for unlimited concurrent users.The standard Boolean Operators, ‘AND’ , ‘OR’, and nested searching, are used in all the evaluated databases thus, the users need not learn additional Boolean Operators when switching in between databases. Proquest Digital Dissertations and Literature Online are the only evaluated databases that use proximity function and which saves time for the users by narrowing the results and thus returned relevant articles.The three evaluated databases cater to both users with little search knowledge with basic search level interface and users with advance search knowledge with advanced search level interface. The ‘search history’ and the ‘save search’ functions in the databases enable easy referral to past searches and saves time for the users. Users who are totally unaware of searching capabilities can access the help functions that are easily available from the hypertext tag found on every page at each databases.Most of the articles are downloaded as a PDF format files. PDF format files take up smaller memory space on the desktop and thus, users can download a few articles without affecting the memory of their hard disk and users just need to download the PDF file viewer to view the articles. Brief view of the document attributes enables the users to decide on reading the article further or ignore the article thus; this feature saves unnecessary time for downloading irrelevant articles.Proquest Digital Dissertations is the only database that does not provide relevance ranking which is a major disadvantage because users might have to sieve through multiple records to retrieve the relevant documents. Cross-search functions in all the databases enable the user to drop the hassle of going through several platforms for research which is time consuming.

7 REFERENCESChowdhury, G.G, & Chowdhury,S.(2001).Information Sources and Searching on the World Wide Web. London: Library Association Publishing.Vibert,C.(2004).An introduction to online competitive intelligence research : search strategies, research case study, research problems, and data source evaluations and reviews. Ohio:Thomson/Texere.Ackermann, E.C., & Hartman,K.(2001).The information searcher’s guide to searching + researching on the Internet + W3. Canada: Wilsonville.Nanyang Technological University Library.(2006). User guide on Digital Dissertations via Proquest.

Retrieved on Aug 15, 2006, (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/lib/collections/db/AAZ-5127.htm).

Nanyang Technological University Library.(2006). User guide on Emerald Fulltext. Retrieved on Aug 20, 2006, (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/lib/collections/db/ABA-5406.htm).

Nanyang Technological University Library. (2006). User guide on Literature Online Retrieved on Aug 30, 2006, (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/lib/collections/db/A362838.htm).

COMPARISON TABLE

TABLE 1 COMPARISON TABLE