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Houston, we have a problem. Or a difficulty.

Bad news I think...

  1. If two groups of people construct thesauri in a particular subject area, the overlap of index terms will only be 60%.
  2. Two indexers using the same thesaurus on the same document use common index terms in only 30% of cases.
  3. The output from two experienced database searchers has only 40% overlap.
  4. Experts' judgements of relevance concur in only 60% of cases.

[Source: JAA Sillince, 1992, Literature searching with unclear objectives: a new approach using argumentation. On-line Review, 16 (6), 391-409

Posted by on February 20, 2004 12:41 PM |
See also : KM : indexers : classification : taxonomy : overlap : problem : J_Sillince

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