[929] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Boolean & Probabilistic
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Buckland)
Wed Aug 5 19:37:57 1992
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1992 18:27:01 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: Michael Buckland <mkb@otlet.berkeley.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Charles Hildreth commented critically (PACS-L 4 Aug) about Boolean
searching in his response to Kathy Kwan's earlier note. But criticism
of Boolean approaches should not be based only on the simplest form of
Boolean searching, namely one single, binary partitioning between
"retrieved" and "not retrieved". Partitioning the database into only
two sets: retrieved and non-retrieved, is the simplest, crudest use of
Boolean. There is considerable scope using Boolean searching for
creating and ranking subsets so that the material found can be modified
dynamically to suit a combination of the preferred SIZE of retrieved
set and the PREFERENCES (e.g. by language and date) the the user may
have -- and to do so in response to the often unpredictable results of
the initial search Similarly analysis of retrieved records can form
the basis for extending the search in preferred directions in ways that
might not have been foreseen before the search began. At present such
flexibility is little supported by existing second-generation OPACS
and, where it is supported, needs some expertise. However this merely
reflects the immature state of development of the state-of-the-art of OPAC
design.
These possibilities are being explored in a project entitled
"Prototype for an Adaptive Library Catalog" at the University of
California, Berkeley, School of Library and Information Studies, with
support from the U.S. Dept of Education through a HEA IID grant. So
far only one progress report on this work has been published --
M.K.Buckland, B.A.Norgard, and C.Plaunt "Design for an Adaptive
Library catalog." in American Society for Information Science Mid-Year
Meeting, 1992. Proceedings. (Silver Spring, MD: ASIS, 1992, pp
165-171). However project progress reports will be presented at the
forthcoming LITA meeting in Denver, September, and and at the Fall ASIS
meeting, Pittsburgh, in October.
However much or little users understand of Boolean operators, we
might also ask how much they understand of the (possibly very complex)
mathematical and other operations underlying probabilistic techniques.
How satisfactory is it to offer retrieval (even effective retrieval) by
techniques that cannot be grasped?
-- Michael Buckland, School of Library & Information Studies,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
