Biswas, S.C.; Smith, F.: Efficiency and effectiveness of deep structure based indexing languages : PRECIS vs. DSIS (1991)
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- Abstract
- A subject indexing language (SIL) is an artificial language used for formulating names of subjects and is composed of (a) a vocabulary, (b) a list of elementary categories, and (c) the rules of syntax. A string indexing language is an SIL, whose expressions are multiple overlappimg index entries, constructed accordingly to explicit syntax rules. PRECIS, developed by Austin, and POPSI, developed by Bhattacharyya, are two such string indexing languages. DSIS is a more versatile version of the POPSI system, developed by Devadason. There have been several attempts to compare and evaluate the superiority of one system over another, with the exception that none of these tried to compare their performances from the searcher's point of view. This present study tries to compare the efficiency and effectiveness of printed subject indexes produced by PRECIS and DSIS on a non-empirical basis and based on the following five major characteristics of index entries identified by Craven as desirable from the searcher's viewpoint: (1) predicitibility, (2) collocation, (3) clarity, (4) succinctness, and (5) eliminability. A representative sample of 600 documents (both macro and micro), chosen from three different social science subject fields, has been used as the test data. The main points of discussion are (a) the term structure, (b) the term relationships, and (c) the entry structure, generated by the two systems. On the whole, a PRECIS index performs better than a DSIS index in terms of most of the above characteristics. It has been concluded that the user will search the former more efficiently and effectively than the latter
