ANALYSIS OF CASE HISTORIES OF PERSONAL INDEX USE,

Abstract

Case histories are summarized for 12 researchers in science and engineering at the Florida State University, i.e., 6 chemists, 4 biologists, 1 engineer, and 1 meteorologist. Over a 10-month period, 258 histories were obtained. The data do not permit the determination with certainty the type of subject index most suitable for a particular type of subject question. Over 70% of the inquiries were subject questions; over 80% of these required only a logical product search. Question-document title pairs were analyzed for each of 381 documents selected as answers to 170 subject questions. Of a possible 1142 concepts, 604 question concepts were matched by document title concepts. Material less than one year old account for less than 1% of the selected documents. Over 20% of the selected documents were over 10 years old, and included a low incidence of conference papers and government reports. A key-word-out-of-context index will be tested in future studies. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1966
Accession Number
AD0643869

Entities

People

  • Dolores M. Miller
  • G. Jahoda
  • Ronald Hutchins

Organizations

  • Florida State University

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Governments
  • Materials

Readers

  • Library and Information Science
  • Theoretical Analysis.