Getting beyond Boole

摘要

Although most computer-based information search systems in current use employ a Boolean search strategy, there is by no means a clear consensus throughout the information retrieval research community that the conventional Boolean approach is best. The well-known drawbacks of the Boolean design include an inhospitable request formalism, frequent null output and output overload, and lack of provision for differing emphasis on different facets of the search. Nontraditional design principles that overcome these problems are already known and available in the research literature. In this article several such alternative approaches are sketched and their advantages over the Boolean design indicated.