Physical, economic, technical, and social constraints are analyzed in the case of the online vendor, and each component in the chain is considered separately. The user's problems are analyzed from the viewpoint of both the intermediary and the end user, and the effect of the changeover to a new system is considered. (Author)

Describes a two-phase stemming algorithm which consists of word root identification and automatic selection of word variants starting with same word root from inverted file. Use of algorithm in book catalog file is discussed. Ten references and example of subject search are appended. (EJS)