When documentary material is indexed by a mechanized classification system, and the results judged by trained professionals, the number of documents in disagreement, after suitable adjustment, defines the error rate of the system. In a test case disagreement was 22 percent and, of this 22 percent, the computer correctly identified two-thirds of…

An experiment in computerized automated indexing of abstracts was conducted in Czechoslovakia. The computer indexing was then compared to manual indexing. (LS)

The metainformational approach represents some attempts to transform the implicit retrieval information contained in primary documents to an explicit information structure. (Author/PF)

A comparative evaluation of results in terms of recall and precision from queries submitted to systems with automatic and manual subject indexing. Differences were attributed to query formulation. The effectiveness of automatic indexing was found equivalent to manual indexing. (Author/KP)

Outlines the concepts and facilities of SLC-II, a basic support for R&D in automatic documentation and language translation, and gives a detailed description of its use in automatic indexing. The design and running of a full-scale pilot project is described, with a parallel experiment in the effectiveness of "thesaurus enrichment" by semiautomatic…

A report of several comparisons designed to measure the retrieval effectiveness of machined-aided indexing and manual indexing. (Author)

The importance of indexing theory is stressed. This paper examines the theory building efforts and describes the work of Jonker, Heilprin, Landry, and Salton. (KP)

Suggests the designation of overlapping hierarchies in thesauri, first outlined in 1973, as a key element in progress towards a successful man-machine partnership. Article updates, expands, and provides theoretical background of 1973 proposal; postulates use of the UDC; and suggests means of distinguishing overlapping terms from other…

Describes MANIS, an information system for retrieval of interdisciplinary information in management, which maintains traditional classification but allows the user to combine terms of his choice, where choice is restricted to terms belonging to the systems of traditional classification. (CWM)

Describes a new text analysis approach to automate the indexing process, i.e., an automated keywording system designed to behave as a human expert indexer, and explains the rule base of the approach, which consists of lists of insertion and deletion rules generated by subject matter experts. (32 references) (Author/SD)

Examines current activities in subject analysis of large bibliographic databases to assist database managers in making cost-effective decisions. Issues addressed include manual indexing aids, automatic indexing, and connecting indexing terms. Several software packages are described, and future research directions are suggested. (58 references)…

This analysis of Zipf's law uses an index for the sequence of observed values of the variables in a Zipf-type relationship. Three important properties relating rank, count, and frequency are identified, shapes of Zipf-type curves are described, and parameters of the Mandelbrot-Zipf law are discussed. (Author/LRW)

Studied the relationship between the vocabulary of user queries and the vocabulary of documents relevant to the queries, as well as the value of adding to the document description record in a retrieval system keywords from previous queries for which the document had proved useful. Eight references are listed. (FM)

Describes results of a study that investigated the effect of variations in indexing exhaustivity on retrieval performance in a vector space retrieval system. The test collection of documents in the National Library of Medicine's Medline file indexed under cystic fibrosis is described, and use of the SMART information retrieval system is discussed.…

Investigates the presence of clustering structure in a document collection and the influence of the presence of clustering structure on the success of cluster-based retrieval. Term-weight and similarity thresholds are discussed, empirical and statistical significance are considered, and indexing exhaustivity for document representation is…