THE REPORT DESCRIBES THE EFFECTS THAT A CONTROLLED VOCABULARY HAS ON THE INDEXING AND SEARCHING OPERATIONS OF THE DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL SYSTEM ESTABLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON FOR THE AIR FORCE MATERIALS LABORATORY. THE SYSTEM CONTAINS ABOUT 30,000 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL REPORTS COVERING ALL ASPECTS OF MATERIALS RESEARCH AND IS CONTROLLED BY…

This study examines automatic indexing performed with a manually constructed thesaurus on a document collection of titles and abstracts of library science master's papers. Errors are identified when the meaning of a posted descriptor, as identified by context in the thesaurus, does not match that of the passage of text which occasioned the…

The investigation is part of a continuing project to find better means for studying and evaluating document representations (e.g., abstracts, indexes). The present study focused on understanding the ways individuals interpret index terms, with the goal of using the findings in improving indexing systems. Indexing systems use all-or-none bases for…

Much of the periodical literature within scientific disciplines is characterized by overlap in content among journals and by scatter of content areas across journals. This obscures the inherent structure that may exist within the literature of discipline, creating problems for authors seeking suitable publication outlets, for editors wishing to…

The objectives of this study were: (1) to create a set of computer programs capable of practical associative processing of NASA's growing document collection, (2) to process the collection with these programs, exhibiting the achievement of a capability to perform associative search of the collection, and (3) to study the use of statistical…

An experiment is reported in which 78 subjects examined synonymic and generic-specific relationships among 513 terms compiled from subject indexes of programming textbooks and manuals. Terms were assigned in groups of 20 so that given decisions for terms could be compared for three subjects. The experiment suggested such methodological…

What is the desirability and usefulness of different thesaurus displays used either singly or in groups? Is an alphabetical listing of terms with cross references more useful to an indexer than a complete hierarchical display? Is the permuted or the rotated term index more useful to the indexer or retriever? Is an alphabetical display along with a…

The Cranfield Project was done in a laboratory sphere. In a practical situation, it is impossible to determine how many documents are relevant to a certain question. Although in the Cranfield Project collections of different sizes have been used, these collections do not fulfill the requirements that the small collections are randomly taken from…

This paper is concerned primarily with the structure of language and how knowledge about this structure can lead to improved automated information retrieval. The paper discusses developments in linguistics and the application of linguistics to information retrieval, especially fact retrieval and indexing. For fact retrieval it is proposed that…

In a document retrieval, or other pattern matching environment where stored entities (documents) are compared with each other, or with incoming patterns (search requests), it appears that the best indexing (property) space is one where each entity lies as far away from the others as possible; that is, retrieval performance correlates inversely…

The experiments involved 11,571 abstracts (with titles), 1,000 key-word stems and 93 search requests. Measures of word association are derived in several ways from the numbers of documents in which two given words co-occur, and measures of similarity from the numbers of words associated with both. Word clusters with different degrees of overlap…

The Classification Research Group has produced a number of reports which explore the theoretical, as opposed to special, classification schemes and worked out their applications in detail in a few selected disciplines. A short and simplified introduction to these reports, which are published under the title "Classification and Information…

Indexing and abstracting can be thought of as a way of modeling an actual document or textual item. Both are miniature versions of the actual thing. Normally, the indexing model is used to locate desired information, while the abstracting model is used as a screening medium to help the searcher decide which of the apparently correct actual items…

The only paper printed in full in this digest is the Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture given by Dr. Burton W. Adkinson entitled: "After Organization X - What Next?" Dr. Adkinson reviews a national plan for abstracting and indexing services proposed by Robert Heller and Associates in the early sixties, in the light of the current requirements…

A 1-YEAR PILOT PROJECT OF DOCUMENT ABSTRACTION WAS UNDERTAKEN BY A VOLUNTARY PANEL OF 32 SCHOOL PLANT SPECIALISTS FROM THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON SCHOOLHOUSE CONSTRUCTION. THE GOAL OF THIS PILOT STUDY, CARRIED OUT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON, WAS TO IDENTIFY, ACQUIRE, ABSTRACT, AND DELIVER TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH INFORMATION…