Document retrieval

About: Document retrieval is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6821 publications have been published within this topic receiving 214383 citations.

Thesaurus federations: loosely integrated thesauri for document retrieval in networks based on Internet technologies

Abstract: As a result of the distribution of interrelated information over several different information systems, the interconnection of information systems has increased in recent years. However, a purely technical interconnection is insufficient for users who need to find their way to information they are looking for. Thesauri are a proven means to identify documents, e.g., books of interest in a library. For different domains, different thesauri are available, which can be used in information systems as well, e.g., for the indexing and retrieval of data objects. Thus, the interconnection of information systems raises the need to integrate related thesauri. Furthermore, recent advances in open interoperability technologies (World Wide Web, CORBA, and Java) offer the potential for completely new technical solutions for employing thesauri. This paper presents an approach for integrating multiple thesaurus databases. It concentrates on the integration of distributed and heterogeneous thesaurus databases and the integration of multilingual and monolingual thesauri. The software architecture takes advantage of the most advanced Internet and CORBA technology currently available in public domain and in commercial implementations.

Failure analysis of subject searches in a test of a new design for subject access to online catalogs

Abstract: This article describes the findings of a research project that tested a new subject-access design in an experimental online catalog that had a wide range of subject-searching capabilities and search trees to govern the system's selection of searching capabilities in response to user queries. Library users at two academic libraries searched this experimental catalog for topics of their own choosing, judged the usefuless of retrieved titles, and answered post-search questions about their searching experiences. Mixed results from a quantitative analysis (i.e., precision scores) were supplemented with the more conclusive results from a qualitative analysis (i.e., failure analysis). Overall, analyses demonstrated that the new subject-access design that featured search trees was more effective in selecting a subject-searching approach that would produce useful information for the subjects users seek than users would select on their own. The qualitative analysis was especially helpful in providing recommendations for improving specific subject-searching approaches to increase their efficiency, increase user perseverance, and encourage browsing. It also suggested enhancements to the new subject-searching design to enable systems to respond to the wide variety of user queries for subjects. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Query-Free Information Retrieval.

Abstract: To liberate users from burdensome information-retrieval activities while incurring minimal system-development and runtime costs, the authors present query-free information retrieval Their system, Fixit, integrates an expert diagnostic system with a preexisting full-text database of maintenance manuals

Descriptor and citation retrieval in the medical behavioral sciences literature:retrieval overlaps and novelty distribution

Abstract: Search results for nine topics in the Medical Behavioral Sciences are reanalyzed to compare the overall performance of descriptor and citation search strategies in identifying relevant and novel documents. Overlap percentages between an aggregate "descriptor-based" database (MEDLINE, EXCERPTA MEDICA, PSYCINFO) and an aggregate "citation-based" database (SCISEARCH, SOCIAL SCISEARCH) ranged from 1% to 26%, with a median overlap of 8% relevant retrievals found using both search strategies. For seven topics in which both descriptor and citation strategies produced reasonably substantial retrievals, two patterns of search performance and novelty distribution were observed: 1) Where descriptor and citation retrieval showed little overlap, novelty retrieval percentages differed by 17-23% between the two strategies; 2) Topics with a relatively high percentage retrieval overlap showed little difference (1-4%) in descriptor and citation novelty retrieval percentages. These results reflect the varying partial congruence of two literature networks and represent two different types of subject relevance.