Automatic query adjustment in document retrieval

摘要

A system is described for the automatic adjustment of queries addressed to information retrieval systems employing a structurised thesaurus for the coordinate indexing of an average of at least five or six descriptors per document. Starting with at least two documents considered by the user as relevant to his inquiry, the system formulates different queries using descriptors occuring in the relevant documents. Results from these queries are presented to the user for relevance assessment as a result of which the most efficient queries are automatically selected and loosened (broadened). The new documents retrieved are again checked for relevance by the user; and with new relevant documents the loop starts again.The result of the automatic procedure is independent of the point of departure. The automatic procedure is superior to traditional searching procedures in terms of both recall and precision. The automatic procedure requires more computing, but probably for more than 80% of the inquiries the need for a documentalist as an intermediary between the user and the system can be avoided.