The Role of Indexing in Subject Retrieval

Austin, Derek

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1775 Copy

Description

Title

The Role of Indexing in Subject Retrieval

Author(s)

Austin, Derek

Issue Date

1975

Keyword(s)

• Classification, Dewey decimal
• Classification

Abstract

"On first reading the list of speakers proposed for this institute, I became aware of being rather the ""odd man out"" for two reasons. Firstly, I was asked to present a paper on PRECIS which is very much a verbal indexing system-at a conference dominated by contributions on classification schemes with a natural bias, as the centenary year approaches, toward the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Secondly, I feared (quite wrongly, as it happens) that I might be at variance with one or two of my fellow speakers, who would possibly like to assure us, in an age when we can no longer ignore the computer, that traditional library schemes such as DDC and Library of Congress Classification (LCC) are capable of maintaining their original function of organizing collections of documents, and at the same time are also well suited to the retrieval of relevant citations from machine-held files. In this context, I am reminded of a review of a general collection of essays on classification schemes which appeared in the Journal of Documentation in 1972. Norman Roberts, reviewing the papers which dealt specifically with the well established schemes, deduced that ""all the writers project their particular schemes into the future with an optimism that springs, perhaps, as much from a sense of emotional involvement as from concrete evidence."" Since I do not believe that these general schemes can play any significant part in the retrieval of items from mechanized files, it appeared that I had been cast in the role of devil's advocate."

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (21st : 1975)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1775

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Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1975.

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