A simple relevancy-ranking strategy for an interface to Boolean OPACs

Authors: Christopher S.G. Khoo; Kwok-Wai Wan

Source: The Electronic Library, Volume 22, Number 2, 2004 , pp. 112-120(9)

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $38.00 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

A relevancy-ranking algorithm for a natural language interface to Boolean online public access catalogs (OPACs) was formulated and compared with that currently used in a knowledge-based search interface called the E-Referencer, being developed by the authors. The algorithm makes use of seven well-known ranking criteria: breadth of match, section weighting, proximity of query words, variant word forms (stemming), document frequency, term frequency and document length. The algorithm converts a natural language query into a series of increasingly broader Boolean search statements. In a small experiment with ten subjects in which the algorithm was simulated by hand, the algorithm obtained good results with a mean overall precision of 0.42 and mean average precision of 0.62, representing a 27 percent improvement in precision and 41 percent improvement in average precision compared to the E-Referencer. The usefulness of each step in the algorithm was analyzed and suggestions are made for improving the algorithm.

Keywords: Online Catalogues; Worldwide Web; User Interfaces

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02640470410533380

Publication date: 2004-02-01