[Sigia-l] Re: using thesauri to improve search

[Andrew Otwell]

On 6/10/02 9:36 PM, "sigia-l-request at asis.org" <sigia-l-request at asis.org>
wrote:

> The problem (I think) is that users aren't likely to search with the
> vocabulary we build, and aren't likely to explicitly specify phrases in their
> queries. 

> If that's the case--and ignoring issues of synonymy for the moment--how do we
> map multi-word, multi-concept queries such as [drug addiction teens] to the
> appropriate, individual indexing terms, i.e. "drug addiction" and
> "adolescents"? Specifically, if 'drug addiction' isn't submitted as a phrase
> (i.e. wrapped in quotes), how does the search software, Inktomi, know that
> users are looking for the 'drug addiction' term in our vocabulary?

Why ignore issues of synonymy even for now? Won't you need to track down
varient terms and keep track of them in the thesaurus?

I'm not sure about the mapping multi-concept terms to other multi-concept
terms. But the search engine issue shouldn't be a big deal. Look at
multi-word search entries in an AND then OR order unless the user specifies
something else:

"drug addiction teens" is would return results as if the user had typed:

"drug AND addiction AND teens", "drug OR addiction OR teens"

Most relevant results will probably come from the in the "AND" query, since
that's almost certainly what the user meant. All of these terms, "drug",
"addiction", and "teens" should be in the thesaurus, either as preferred or
varient terms. 

Of course, if a term is wrapped in quotes, it should probably be treated as
a single term only.