The RETRIEVAL PROCESS

Before documentary information can be used, a complex series of operations have to take place: 1. information must be recorded in documents, 2. each document must be stored with others in some accessible place and its location known, 3. characteristic aspects of each document must be identified, to form a document profile, and this must be recorded with others in some file, 4. the potential user must formulate some query or express some interest in terms of characteristics recorded about documents, 5. this user profile must be compared with document profiles and the locations of matching documents identified, 6. the documents themselves must be located and presented to the user.