Examines the knowledge base of an intermediary expert system that provides advice about search term selection. Topics include a proposal for an integrated approach, including an option focusing on terminological attributes based on knowledge acquired from professional searchers; and the content of the knowledge base and the research needed to…

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…

Discussion of MEDLINE document indexing focuses on a study that assessed the use of free text, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), and a variety of combination retrieval strategies. Prior research involving free text and controlled vocabularies is reviewed, and results of the study indicate that MeSH does have an important role in text retrieval.…