Research into the practical results of on‐line information retrieval: an extensive analysis

This paper describes the results of an extensive search into two factors which effect, to a high degree, the efficiency of on‐line information retrieval. These two factors are firstly the manner by which keywords are chosen as a means of retrieval by the reviewers of the reference work and secondly the degree with which papers with comparable contents are accorded similar keywords. The influence of these two factors on the practical results of on‐line retrieval is shown by the example of two extensive searches: these searches were done manually as well as on‐line. From these two methods it is then possible to compare what is retrieved by the computer and what is in reality available.