Comparison of selecting, abstracting and indexing by COMPENDEX, INSPEC and PASCAL and the impact of this on manual and automated retrieval of information

The journal ETA (Elektrowärme im technischen Ausbau) is commonly referenced by COMPENDEX, INSPEC and PASCAL. A number of annual volumes of this journal (1974–1977) were examined for papers concerning the subject ‘The application of heat pumps for the heating of houses’. Twenty‐five such articles were found. Whether or not these papers had been included in the three bibliographies was determined. Successively examined were (1) the number of the selected articles, (2) the quality of the abstracts, and (3) the suitability, precision and efficiency of the total of allocated subject index terms: classification codes, controlled and uncontrolled terms, and title words. It appears that the selection of papers is quite different for each of the three databases and that the abstracts and allocated subject index terms as well as the title words often do not reproduce the subject of the original paper. The subject index terms which were relevant to the chosen subject were selected. With these selected index terms, five different searches were carried out in each of the databases with the help of the computer, via ESA/IRS; in addition to this a manual search was done via the printed editions. Recall, precision and overlap seemed to be dependent on the chosen search strategy. All these are shown in tables and Venn diagrams.