Index Versus Full-text Search: A Usability Study of User Preference and Performance
This article reports on the results of testing two versions of an information product, Usability testing and research: one version, an Adobe Acrobat Reader e-book with an index with the locators hyperlinked to the page reference for each entry; the other version, the same e-book without
an index, but with the full-text search capabilities provided by Acrobat Reader. We first summarize the current literature regarding human indexing and information retrieval by machine (search engines). We then describe the methodology for testing, the testing results, our conclusions, and
implications for future research.
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 May 2004
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