Facet tabulation of index terms

摘要

A trial was made to display index terms in a table form with the aid of a computer. The target data are articulated subject indexes in which terms are linked with prepositions and commas to form sentence-like phrases. A simple information extraction algorithm was devised by utilizing the highly structured syntactic structures; no word dictionary is required. Prepositions and commas are used as delimiters for extracting index terms pertinent to the essential facets of a subject. The approach was applied to index modifications in the general subject index to Chemical Abstracts. The modifications were processed on a personal computer laden with LISP programs for information extraction and table format display. The adequacy of the algorithm was relatively high for its simplicity. Facet tabulation of index terms not only facilitates rapid scanning but also provides document arrangements convenient for later reference or review. In addition, it may help a reader quickly understand index phrases, namely, the main elements of documents.