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Scientists meet the KWIC index

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  • Wm. Mansfield Adams
  • Laurence C. Lockley

Abstract

A KWIC Cumulative Index to the first 53 years of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has been produced and distributed to the members of the Society. There are only about 1,000 members of this group. This paper reports the reactions of this group of scientists to the novel index. Temporal variation of the preference is studied both as a simple Markov process and as a birth and death model. The findings are extrapolated to predict the stable level of preference. By the birth and death model, about 75% of the respondents would eventually prefer the KWIC index over the traditional subject index. Authors provided a large percentage of the respondents so they were treated separately. About 80% of the authors would eventually prefer the KWIC index, assuming no change in the environment. The simple Markov process gave slightly lower values. Because of the rapid change in information retrieval techniques, these results may not remain valid very long, nor for groups in different environments.

Suggested Citation

  • Wm. Mansfield Adams & Laurence C. Lockley, 1968. "Scientists meet the KWIC index," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 47-59, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:amedoc:v:19:y:1968:i:1:p:47-59
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.5090190110
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