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Background Information

Review of Existing Indexing Languages

Analysis of Structure of Indexing Language in Thesaurus

Thesaurus

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ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURE OF INDEXING LANGUAGE IN THESAURUS

• Suitability for the Environment
• Type of Indexing Language
• Pre-Coordinate Headings and Post-Coordinate Retrieval
• Forms of Terms
• Precision and Recall
• Specificity and Exhaustivity

Precision and Recall

Precision relates to the percentage of the documents in a retrieved set that are relevant. Our thesaurus employs the following precision devices:

i) Specificity in the indexing language

ii) Post-coordinate retrieval using Boolean logic

iii) Scope notes and qualifiers to reduce the ambiguity of terms

iv) Structural syndetic relationships that lead user from broader preferred terms to more specific ones.

Recall measures the proportion of relevant documents in the database that are actually present in the retrieved set. Our thesaurus employs the following recall devices:

i) Control of word forms (lexical variants)

ii) Truncation in post-coordinate retrieval (word fragment searching)

iii) Control of synonyms and quasi-synonyms via cross-references from non-preferred to preferred terms

iv) Structural syndetic relationships that improve recall by informing user of related, broader and narrower terms.

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