Document retrieval using a serial bit string search

摘要

An experimental best match retrieval system is described based on the serial file organisation. Documents and queries are characterised by fixed length bit strings and the time-consuming character-by-character term match is preceeded by a bit string search to eliminate large numbers of documents which cannot possibly satisfy the query. Two methods, one fully automatic and one partially manual in character, are described for the generation of such bit string characterisations. Retrieval experiments with a large document test collection show that the two-level search can increase substantially the efficiency of serial searching while maintaining retrieval effectiveness, and that a single-level search based only upon the bit strings results in only a small decrease in effectiveness in some cases.