Thesaurus-Enhanced Search Interfaces
An important issue search
engines face is user inquiries matching the vocabulary in surrogate records. If
a term doesn't exactly match, that source will not come up as a search result
even if it is exactly what the searcher is looking for. If I am looking for a
book on prehistoric reptiles, if I put that in, I may have gotten better
results if I had searched for "dinosaurs" instead. This is a problem
catalogers have faced and with emerging technologies, they have been able to
fix this for the most part. Early version
s of thesaurus enhanced search
interfaces were introduced in the 1970’s to largely help with filling the gap
between what the user thinks they are looking for and what they are really
looking for in a catalog. Catalogers realized it would be much easier to
provide this tool within the system instead of hoping that one day users will
just be able to figure out what to put in and what will give good results and
what will not. Without having to exactly match terms in a catalog system, users
are able to get much better search results. The 1980’s brought artificial
intelligence and expanded thesauri use within information systems.
Thesaurus-enhanced systems use a mapping technique in which the user’s term is
linked with terms found in the system’s thesaurus and the results are arranged
with the user’s term first and then the other located terms after that. Some
systems even recommend different terms while typing your inquiry or after the
search has been submitted with the number of results that you would get based
on those terms. While integrating thesauri into search interfaces has greatly
improved how users are able to search using these systems, they are far from
perfect. Going back to the prehistoric reptiles example, after looking up “reptile”
in a thesaurus, the definition the thesaurus comes up with is “a person who is
very dishonest” and offers terms such as weasel, cheater, snake, and rascal.
The only one that is maybe going to get me results I am looking for is snake,
as in “prehistoric snake”, but still not exactly the dinosaurs I am really
looking for. The problem with using a thesaurus in a search interface can be
that the term you are searching more may not be used in the way the thesaurus
thinks you are using it. Of course that would be an example of a very ineffective
search system and while thesauri systems may not be flawless, they are helping
users and are being improved all the time.
s of thesaurus enhanced search
interfaces were introduced in the 1970’s to largely help with filling the gap
between what the user thinks they are looking for and what they are really
looking for in a catalog. Catalogers realized it would be much easier to
provide this tool within the system instead of hoping that one day users will
just be able to figure out what to put in and what will give good results and
what will not. Without having to exactly match terms in a catalog system, users
are able to get much better search results. The 1980’s brought artificial
intelligence and expanded thesauri use within information systems.
Thesaurus-enhanced systems use a mapping technique in which the user’s term is
linked with terms found in the system’s thesaurus and the results are arranged
with the user’s term first and then the other located terms after that. Some
systems even recommend different terms while typing your inquiry or after the
search has been submitted with the number of results that you would get based
on those terms. While integrating thesauri into search interfaces has greatly
improved how users are able to search using these systems, they are far from
perfect. Going back to the prehistoric reptiles example, after looking up “reptile”
in a thesaurus, the definition the thesaurus comes up with is “a person who is
very dishonest” and offers terms such as weasel, cheater, snake, and rascal.
The only one that is maybe going to get me results I am looking for is snake,
as in “prehistoric snake”, but still not exactly the dinosaurs I am really
looking for. The problem with using a thesaurus in a search interface can be
that the term you are searching more may not be used in the way the thesaurus
thinks you are using it. Of course that would be an example of a very ineffective
search system and while thesauri systems may not be flawless, they are helping
users and are being improved all the time.
References
Shiri,
A.A., Revie, C., & Chowdhury, G. (2002). Thesaurus-enhanced search
interfaces. Journal
of Information
Science 28:111-122.
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