Theory and practice of alphabetical subject indexing

주제색인의 이론과 실제

Index is a systematic guide to items contained in, or concepts derived from, a collection, Thus, it is represented as a paired set of index terms (t) and documents (D) : I= {(t,D) vertical bar t .mem. V, D .mem. W), where V is index vocabulary and W is document collection. Indexing is the process of analysing the informational content of records of knowledge and expressing the informational content in the language of the indexing system. It involves: 1) Selecting indexable concepts in a document; and 2) expressing these concepts in the language of the indexing system (as index entries): and an ordered list. Indexing process involves technical, semantic and syntactic problems. Technical problems are related to the accuracy of indexing, which is primarily governed by the indexer's ability of analysing subject, identifying indexable concepts, and coding. The proper levels of indexing exhaustivity, and index language specificity are also significant factors affecting the quality of index. Semantic problems are related to the choice of index terms and the form in which they should be used. Equivalent, hierarchical and affinitive/associative relationships of index terms are involved. Syntactic problems are largely related to the coordination of index terms. This process of coordination arises from the need to be able to search for the intersection of two or more classes defined by terms denoting distinct concepts. Finally, most valuable aspects of alphabetical subject indexing theories and practices are derived from those of Cutter, Kaiser, Ranganathan, Coates, Lynch and Austin, and discussed in details.