CONCISE DISPLAY OF INDEX ENTRIES

A computer‐aided method has been devised to display index entries in a concise tabular form. The data studied are index terms and their text modifications in the Analytical Abstracts database. The index entries are articulated subject indexes, in which terms or words are linked with prepositions and punctuation marks. The simple syntactic structures are expressed by BNF (Backus Naur form) notations, from which rules are derived to extract substantive words in accordance with the facets pertinent to analytical chemistry. LISP programs were written for word extraction and facet tabulation and tested on a personal computer. Repetitive expressions are eliminated, while no necessary information is discarded. The tabular format, clear and readable, can expedite scanning of a large number of documents. In addition, it facilitates understanding of the contents of documents, providing facets for easy assimilation.