index

INDEXING AND ABSTRACTING
Instructor: Muh-Chyun Tang
muhchyun.tang@gmail.com (TEL) 33662967.
Dept. of Library and Information Science,
National Taiwan University
Discussion Forum

Course description
Introduction to the fundamentals of indexing and abstracting in theory and practices, from a information representation perspective. Topics covered include subject analysis, vocabulary control, types of abstracts, multimedia indexing, metadata, as well as the basic attributes of indexing (e.g. specificity, exhaustivity, and degree of coordination).
Emphasis is placed on the relationships between indexing attributes and information retrieval, the comparison between human and machine indexing, the principle of user-centered indexing, and display of indexes in a networked environment.

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body confiningly few sides. John Updike

Course schedule

Week	Topic	Readings
1. 02/25	Orientation & introduction
2. 03/04	Indexing and abstracting services and scholarly communication	Lancaster, 2003 pp. 1-5; Visit structured abstract website
3. 03/11	Structure and depth of indexing (exhaustivity, specificity)	Lancaster, 2003 pp. 7-23
4. 03/18	Indexing and evaluation metrics ; (Soergel, 1985), p.328-337	Lancaster, 2003 pp. 24-39
5. 03/25	Human indexing process; R-about	Weinberger. Ch. 1
6. 04/01	Faceted analysis ; Indexing exercise/due next week	Faceted analysis/Chinese reading
7. 04/08	Vocabulary control; Thesaurus exercise/due next week Online Thesaurus Online directory of taxonomy	Weinberger. Ch. 3; (Lancaster, 2003), pre-coordination, pp. 50-63.
8. 04/15	Google Custom Search Engline	Weinberger. Ch. 4;
9. 04/22	Interaction design and prototyping
10. 04/29	folklsonomy (standardization vs. user expression);	Weinberg, Why indexing fails the researcher Collaborative tag suggestion, criteria for good tags p. 3
11. 05/06	Custom Search Engline project due
12. 05/13	Machine indexing; progess report 1 and 2 due	(Croft, 1989)
13. 05/20	Comparison between machine & human indexing; Citation indexing; progress report 3 due	(Lancaster, 2003), pp. 252-274; Discuss with the instructor about your final project
14. 05/27	Automatic thesaurus construction; clustering	(Schatz et al., 1996)
15. 06/03	Interface prototype project due
16. 06/10	Multimedia, and fiction indexing & retrieval Resopnses to subject indeterminacy	O'Connor, Ch. 6.
17. 06/17	Term suggestion; review	Hearst. Clustering versus faceted categories for infomration exploration
18. 06/24	Final exam

Assignments and Grading

1. Class participation: 10% of your final grade
2. Final exam: 30%
3. Homework: 10%

Group projects:
Students will form into group of 2 to 4 for three group projects. For each project, besides the group reports, each group member will turn in a half-page individual report that explains your contributions and reflects on what you have learned.

1. Thesaurus construction project: 10%
Each group will choose a domain of knowledge and
1. Introduce and analyze a existing controlled vocabulary in that domain.
2. create a simple thesaurus using a thesaurus editing software.
The thesaurus should contain about 60 terms and demonstrate all the semantical relationships.

2. Google Custome Search project: 10%
For this project, each group will create a Web-based information retrieval system using Google custom search engine (http://www.google.com/cse/). You will need to collect and index about 70 Web-based information resources for a topic of your choosing.
A. Define the collection and indexing policies for your collection according to your aim and scope.
B. Design a knowledge organization scheme for the collection.
C. Collect and index 100 -120 web-based resources according to your indexing policy.
D. Turn in a 1-3 pages written report that explains your design decisions and rationales.
E. Present your collection and written report in the class (10 minutes).

3. Interface prototyping project: 30%
For the final project, each group will design an index display for a bibliographic database according to the specifications listed below. The index display is designed to facilitate users browse the collection. The collection can be either real or imaginary, but the documents included in the database have to be real. First come up with an institutional scenario (preferably imaginary) that demands a creation of a collection of online information resources. The scenario will dictate the aim, scope and intended audience for your collection.
Online examples of browsable index display:
the ADAM Project
Epicurious recipe database
Flamenco interface for art images

This assignment will consist of three components: a prototype of the website, a written report describing your design rationales, and a presentation at the end of the semester.

A. Website prototyping (most pages should be used in the horizontal mode for viewing):
1 . A page showing the opening screen of the electronic version of the database. This should include:
-The name of your index
-A brief introductory statement about the subject domain and collection scope of the database.
2. A page that lists the top-leveled categories of the browsable display and examples of their sub-categories.
3. A page that illustrates a hypothetical excerpt from the browsable display after the user initiates a search by clicking on any of the top-leveled categories.
4. A page illustrates the results of a hypothetical search, including two or three document surrogates.
5. A page shows your record structure, filled out with the data for one document.

B. Written reports
1. Subject scope
2. User information needs
3. Analysis and indexing methods (e.g. faceted analysis, subject analysis procedures, inclusion of machine indexing etc.)
4. Depth of indexing (including exhaustivity and specificity)
5. Justify your choices of the top-leveled categories based on the scope of your collection and the intended users' needs.
6. Illustrate the following concepts covered in the class using your index:
a. Polyhierarchy
b. Hierarchical relationships (BT, NT)
c. Cross-reference (SEE, SEE ALSO)

C. Oral presentation (10-15 minutes per group including a brief question-answering section)
Prepare Power point for the presentation.
Organize your oral presentation around the illustration pages. It's best that you provide a search scenario that direct the browsig activities. Explain the thinking behind the facets and attributes/fields to organize the collection.

*Not graded progress reports for your final project
Each student with give 3 progress reports after the mid-term exam (due dates see course calendar).
This is designed so that you can get feedbacks from the instructor and the class for different components of your final project.
Report 1: Subject scope and user information needs.
Report 2: Documentary domain of your collection, including 6-10 bibliographic records of the exemplar documents.
Report 3: The top-leveled categories of your index display

References

Anderson, James D. (1997) Guidelines for Indexes and Related Information Retrieval Devices. National Information Standard Organization (NISO) Technical Report 2. Bethesda, MD: NISO Press. Available from http://www.niso.org/standards/std_resources.html

Croft, W. Bruce (1989) “Automatic indexing”. In Indexing, The State of our Knowledge and the
State of our Ignorance, edited by Bella Hass Weinberg, pp.86-99.

Kwasnik, Barbara H. (1999). The role of classification in knowledge representation and discovery.
Library Trends 48 (1): 22-47. (full-text available online through universitylibrary)

Lancster, 2003. Indexing and abstracting in theory and practice.

Large A., Lucy A. Tedd, R. J. Hartley. (1999). Information seeking in the online age.

Lawrence, Steve (1999). Digital libraries and autonomous citation indexing. In IEEE Computer, 32(6). pp. 67-71.

O'Connor, Brian C. (1996). Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting: Pointing Virtue and Power. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited.

Salton & McGill (1983). Introduction to modern information retrieval. McGraw-Hill.

Soergel, D. (1994). Indexing and retrieval performance: the logical evidence. Perspectives in indexing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v.45, no.8: 589-599.

B. Schatz, E. Johnson, and P. Cochrane. Interactive term suggestion for users of digital libraries: Using subject thesarui and co-occurrence lists for information retrieval. In 1st ACM Int'l Conf. on Digital Libraries, pages 126-133, 1996.

Soergel, D. (1985). Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and Retrieval Systems. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Taylor, Arlene G. (2004) The Organization of Information. 2nd edition. Englewood, Colo.:Libraries Unlimited.

Wellisch, Hans H. (1995) Indexing from A to Z. Second edition. New York: H. W. Wilson.

Weinberg, Bella Hass (1988) “Why indexing fails the researcher”. The Indexer 16(1):3-6.