Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 17:24:42 +0200 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: SOLVEJ VORSTER Subject: Seeking an appropriate thesaurus Dear indexers, I recently became head of the University of Cape Town's Fine Art and Drama Library. I am concerned that although there are excellent journal indexes for the fine arts, we rely mainly on the Humanities Index for drama and theatre. Our local journals of course are not indexed by any of the published indexes (our branch library has yet to be networked to take advantage of CD-ROM indexes). I am very keen to begin indexing the drama journals but I cannot find an appropriate thesaurus or list of index terms specific enough for the subject. Could any of the esteemed indexers/subject librarians/reference librarians out there point me in the right direction. As a very recent participant of this list, I amy not be directing this query to the correct audience, but would appreciate some feedback. Solvej Vorster Librarian-in-Charge Hiddingh Hall Library University of Cape Town Cape Town South Africa EMail : SOLVEJ@uctlib.uct.ac.za ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 11:58:24 EST Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "LINDER, ELLIOTT" Subject: Re: Seeking an appropriate thesaurus Solvej, You might want to start with a look at the Getty Art History Program's "Art and Architecture Thesauurus." It is available both electronically and in print. Send a message to Susanne Warren, who is their Instructional Services Coordinator. Her e-mail address is: bb.aat@rlg.bitnet She can probably help you. Elliott Linder NASA STI Program/Informatiion International elinder@sti.nasa.gov ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Seeking an appropriate thesaurus Author: "Indexer's Discussion Group" at CCMGATE Date: 5/16/94 11:40 Dear indexers, I recently became head of the University of Cape Town's Fine Art and Drama Library. I am concerned that although there are excellent journal indexes for the fine arts, we rely mainly on the Humanities Index for drama and theatre. Our local journals of course are not indexed by any of the published indexes (our branch library has yet to be networked to take advantage of CD-ROM indexes). I am very keen to begin indexing the drama journals but I cannot find an appropriate thesaurus or list of index terms specific enough for the subject. Could any of the esteemed indexers/subject librarians/reference librarians out there point me in the right direction. As a very recent participant of this list, I amy not be directing this query to the correct audience, but would appreciate some feedback. Solvej Vorster Librarian-in-Charge Hiddingh Hall Library University of Cape Town Cape Town South Africa EMail : SOLVEJ@uctlib.uct.ac.za ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 15:49:44 EDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Glenn F Subject: optical disk indexing question This message is being cross-posted, so I apologize for any duplication. Please respond directly to me; if there's interest, I'll summarize for the list. Thanks. Our Library is attempting to scan the contents of our Association's journal to optical disk on a pc-based system. For indexing/retrieval, we are using ZyImage, which combines Calera's Wordscan Plus OCR program with ZyIndex, Zylab's indexing program. The problem is, formatting the output in some type of "citation" format (eg; author/title/journal, etc.) and not the file's "path," which is the "default" format. If anyone has any experience attempting the above OR experience with ZyImage or ZyIndex, I would be very anxious to hear from you. Glenn Ferdman FORE Library of AHIMA Chicago glennf@interaccess.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 15:23:39 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Maryann Corbett Subject: Index typefaces and layouts We are starting to think about composition for the enormous statutory index t o Minnesota Statutes which we have been working on for several years. The print- ing specifications we have been using for past indexes produce a pretty readable product, but we might have to go tighter and smaller. I'm looking for advice, bibliography, horror stories, good and bad examples, anything you can tell me about what might work or not work for a two-volume index, probably 1500 pages per volume, with headings and three levels of subheadings. I'd especially like to hear from index editors who have to write printing specifications. Thanks for whatever you can tell me. Reply to the list or to me directly at the address below. Maryann Corbett maryann.corbett@revisor.leg.state.mn.us ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 17:47:40 CST Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Norm Howden Subject: Re: optical disk indexing question Why are you using ZyIndex? It is NOT per se a good retrieval program, it grew out of software used to find things on a hard disk. For about $99 you can purchase Papyrus and move the text into it, then you will have search access and can output materials in a wide variety of bibliographic formats. Will you have to pay a royalty if you distribute the CD-ROM? Probably, unless you can convince the Papyrus folks that distributing a version without authoring capability would be good advertising for their product. (Folio does that with the Netware help data) +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Norman Howden | | | | School of Library and Information Sciences | | University of North Texas | | howden@lis.unt.edu (817) 565-2760 | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 20:45:00 EDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: David Lewis Subject: query on choosing size of a controlled vocabulary A colleague of mine whose main interest is in developing methods for automatically assigning controlled vocabulary terms posed the following question to me: > I have another question for you. Do you know of good research on the > issue of choosing the size of a set of index terms. It's related to > the kind of users. Dedicated expert users can presumably deal with a > larger and richer set of index terms than casual users who would have > difficulty making sense of the finer distinctions you get with a > larger set of categories? Do you know if anyone has studied the > details of that tradeoff or come up with ways to chose sets of index > terms that optimize usability for various user populations? Does anyone know of some literature I could point him to? Thanks,Dave David D. Lewis AT&T Bell Laboratories email: lewis@research.att.com 600 Mountain Ave.; Room 2C-408 ph. 908-582-3976 Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636; USA dept. fax. 908-582-7550 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 20:19:35 CST Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Norm Howden Subject: Re: query on choosing size of a controlled vocabulary David, Just pulling what's close on my bookshelf, I find that Miranda Pao talks briefly about depth of indexing AKA exhaustivity in CONCEPTS OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL, 1989, Libraries Unlimited, on page 128. She notes that Lancaster (sorry, no specific title mentioned) cited studies that indicate diminishing returns beyond about 10 descriptors. Also, indexers assign most of the terms in the first 10 minutes of working with the material. Beyond looking at some F.W. Lancaster titles, I would of course suggest looking at the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, starting with the chapter in the 1989 issue on Subject Analysis, by none other than F.W. Lancaster et.al. Norm +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Norman Howden | | | | School of Library and Information Sciences | | University of North Texas | | howden@lis.unt.edu (817) 565-2760 | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 May 1994 19:19:37 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Bouchard Julie Subject: Library automation software I am a librarianship and information sciences student at the Universite of Montreal, and I have to make index for the handbooks of Multilis, an integrated library automation software. Does somebody have some experience with such books ? Can you give me some hints? Did you give acces to commands, functions,...? How did you do it ? Did you use special typographie ?... I will appreciate any advice. (Excuse me english!) Thanking you in anticipation, Julie Bouchard Universite de Montreal boucharj@ere.umontreal.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 12:59:00 +22304700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sandra Henderson Subject: Re: query on choosing size of a controlled vocabulary In-Reply-To: <199405170052.AA41546@email.nla.gov.au> On Mon, 16 May 1994, David Lewis wrote: > A colleague of mine whose main interest is in developing methods for > automatically assigning controlled vocabulary terms posed the > following question to me: > > > I have another question for you. Do you know of good research on the > > issue of choosing the size of a set of index terms. It's related to > > the kind of users. Dedicated expert users can presumably deal with a > > larger and richer set of index terms than casual users who would have David,This question is of interest. NO, I don't know offhand of any literature about this, although no doubt there is some. My section produces an index to current Australian periodicals, and we also maintain the thesaurus used in the index (the APAIS Thesaurus). I'm also very familiar with another thesaurus, the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings. In both cases the principle underlying the creation of any new term is literary warrant, ie, if there is a sufficient body of literature about a topic, it needs its own heading. For many years NLM maintained a system of Major and Minor descriptors, and only major descriptors appeared as subject headings in the print Index Medicus. However, they relatively recently gave up this distinction, so all their headings are now used in print. The original argument was that using only the MAJOR headings would cut down on the number of places a user would have to look up. My guess is that they were getting feedback that users would prefer more precise headings, so they didn't have to spend so much time browsing under the general headings. In APAIS, which has a much smaller thesaurus, we do get complaints from users that the headings are too broad, and they'd like more precise terms, but given that we index only 12,500 items per year, further breakdown of the thesaurus would probably give us lots of headings with only 1 or 2 records attached, which would also cause user frustration. In setting up a thesaurus, the best way to go about it is to have a very good understanding of the articles to be indexed. Users, even quite inexperienced ones (and over the years I've trained hundreds of people to use the MEDLINE service from NLM), tend to think quite precisely about subjects, and dislike getting the load of irrelevant material that results from broad thesaurus terms. As a long term manager of the National Library of Australia's database hosting service, I have come into contact with many thesauri, and believe that NLM's MeSH is the best of the lot, because it is structured in such a way that users can search either very specifically (on individual diseases or chemicals or whatever) OR very broadly (by searching a whole hierarchy of terms at once). If I were constructing a thesaurus from scratch I'd try to emulate NLM as much as possible. The expert (subject expert not search expert) can look for exacatly what he/she wants, and the non-expert can search more broadly around topics and not miss anything. **************************************** _________________ "Sandra Henderson" T T T T T T T T shenders@nla.gov.au I I I I I I I I National Library of Australia I I I I I I I I Phone: +616 2621523 Fax: +616 2731180 T T T T T T T T =================== **************************************** =========================================================================