An experiment in superficial indexing was carried out to elaborate the contract between indexing with a controlled vocabulary and using automated methods as described by Salton. (Author)

Presents the human evaluation of ILIAD, a program for machine-aided indexing that was designed to assist expert librarians in computer-aided indexing and document analysis. Topics include controlled indexing and free indexing; natural language and concept-based information retrieval; evaluation methodology; syntactic variations; and a comparison…

The issue of free-text versus controlled vocabulary is examined. The history of the issue, which is seen as beginning with the debate over title term indexing in the nineteenth century, is reviewed and questions not satisfactorily addressed by previous research are raised. (Author/EM)

Describes a study that was conducted to determine how well subject authority lists, or thesauri, control indexing vocabulary. Indexer consistency using the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux (CAB) thesaurus was tested by comparing indexing done by CAB and by National Agricultural Library (NAL) indexers. (six references) (LRW)

This paper on Thesauri in Educational Documentation attempts to show by description and analysis the difference in application between thesauri and classification schemes as indexing languages in documentary information systems, and from this to infer possible future developments. First, the differences between the pre-coordination and…

Considers the quality of bibliographic control achieved by the three online databases offering significant coverage of the literature of librarianship: ERIC, LISA, and Library Literature. Focusing on coverage and indexing, the study compares online search results with the tables of contents of 67 journals and reports the results. (27 references)…

This study examines the differences in subject approaches found between two secondary services in education: Education Index and ERIC's Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). A sample of 30 journal articles was taken from each tool in the areas of educational psychology, school administration, and special education; after an investigation…

Presents the advantages and disadvantages of free text and controlled vocabulary retrieval techniques and a methodology to assist in deciding on the optimal technique for a particular purpose. The relevance of the techniques for expert systems and full text contexts is also discussed and recommendations for further research are made. (Author/EM)

A series of experiments determined whether thesauri enhance the retrieval of Chinese documents and automatic indexing can compete with manual indexing in a Chinese information retrieval system (CIRS). Statistical analysis of recall and precision measures suggest that relational thesauri do improve retrieval and that automatic indexing is…

Describes a study that compared the coverage of the nursing profession, subject heading specificity, and ease of retrieval of the MEDLINE and Nursing & Allied Health (CINAHL) online databases. The strengths and weaknesses of each database are discussed and hints for searching on both databases are provided. (four references) (CLB)

Explores the underlying concepts involved in the design of art scholarly databases and describes three systems definition projects currently in progress. The discussion covers the revisions of MARC formats and authority controls used in bibliographic information networks that might support an art scholarly database. (eight references) (CLB)

Describes a study of professional searchers that investigated their decisions about using search terms. The use of descriptors from a controlled vocabulary versus the use of textwords for free-text searching is examined, searching styles and differences in subject areas are discussed, and the quality of thesauri and indexing is considered. (six…

Analysis of current methods for achieving compatibility or convertibility between two or more indexing languages draws attention to the need for a switching language to establish equivalency between concepts, not terms. In order to examine the assumption of the conceptual equivalency of identical terms in the indexing languages of related subject…

Describes the Belief Function Model for automatic indexing and ranking of documents which is based on a controlled vocabulary and on term frequencies in each document. Belief Function Theory is explained, and the Belief Function Model is compared to the Standard Vector Space Model. (17 references) (LRW)

Assesses the impact of current coverage and indexing policies on MEDLINE's retrieval performance in the medical behavioral sciences literature by comparing retrievals in EXCERPTA MEDICA, PSYCHINFO, SCISEARCH, and SOCIAL SCISEARCH. Searches were made with descriptors, cited references, and natural language, and recall, precision, and novelty ratios…