Roles of Indexing, Abstracting

and Thesaurus Construction in

Information Retrieval

Presented by:
Sevilla, Dominic
Elpedes, Niesel
Cañete, Ralph Elixer
The Role ole of Indexing in
Information Retrieval
What is Information Retrieval?
• Information Retrieval (IR) is a field of study and
practice focused on finding and retrieving
relevant information from large collections of
data, such as databases, document repositories,
or the internet. It involves designing algorithms
and systems that can efficiently search through
vast amounts of data to find documents or data
items that meet the user’s query or information
need.
 What is the role of indexing in information
retrieval??

Indexing plays an essential role in information

retrieval! It helps organize and structure large
amounts of data, making it easier to search for
and find specific information quickly. It’s like
creating a roadmap to navigate through a vast
library of information.
Examples
• Online shopping
Imagine browsing an online store with millions of
products. Without indexing, finding a specific item
would be a tedious task of scrolling through endless
pages. However, online retailers use indexing to
categorize products based on attributes like brand,
size, color, and price.
 Music stream
services
• Music streaming services like Spotify and Apple
Music employ indexing to organize their vast
libraries of songs. They create indexes based on
artists, genres, moods, and even lyrics, enabling
you to quickly find specific songs or discover new
music based on your preferences.
Search Engines
• Search engines like Google utilize search indexers
to organize and structure information from the
web, enabling them to deliver relevant search
results quickly and efficiently . Search indexers
work by crawling the web, extracting text, and
creating an index that maps keywords to their
respective documents.
Libraries
• Libraries have long relied on card catalogs as a
physical manifestation of indexing. Each card
represents a book, detailing its title, author, and
location within the library shelves.
The Role of Abstracting in
Information Retrieval
What is Abstracting?
• It involves creating concise summaries or
abstract of the main points, findings and
conclusions of a documents.
• Provide a brief overview of a documents content
without the need to read the entire text.
Purpose:
• Abstracting services help quickly assess the
relevance of the document to their research
interests without having to read the full text.
• Abstracts provide a snapshot of the key
information, allowing users to decide whether to
access the complete document.
Examples of Abstracting
Services
• PubMed: A widely used indexing and abstracting
service in the field of medicine and life sciences.
Structured Abstract
Examples of Abstracting
Services
• IEEE Xplore: Focuses on indexing and abstracting
content related to technology and engineering.
Examples of Abstracting
Services
• EBSCOhost: Offers a range of indexing and
abstracting services across various disciplines,
including academic, medical, and general
literature.
Examples of Abstracting
Services
• ERIC (Education Resources Information Center):
Focuses on indexing and abstracting recourses
related to education.
Benefits in Information
Retrieval
• Efficiency: Abstracts provide concise summaries of
documents, allowing users to quickly assess
relevance without reading the entire text. This saves
time and speeds up the retrieval process.
• Relevance: By summarizing the main ideas, abstracts
help users determine if a document is pertinent to
their needs, improving the accuracy of search results.
• Information Overload Reduction: Abstracts help
manage the volume of information by presenting the
core content, reducing the amount of data users
must sift through.
Benefits in Information
Retrieval
• Enhanced Search and Retrieval: Abstracts can be
indexed and searched, improving the precision
and recall of information retrieval systems.
• Improved Decision-Making: With a clear summary
of content, users can make better decisions about
which documents to explore in detail, leading to
more effective and informed research.
Thesaurus Construction in
Information Retrieval
What is thesaurus?

• Librarian Lexicon defines thesaurus as a

vocabulary of key words, i.e., a standardized set
of terms and phrases authorized for use in an
indexing system to describe a subject area or
information domain. some authors, e.g. D.
Bawden offered definition of thesaurus purpose.
Thesaurus and IR systems
• Information retrieval is defined as the process of
searching a collection of documents, using the
term document in its widest sense, in order to
identify those documents which deal with a
specific subject.
ERIC database thesaurus

• The Education Resources Information Center

database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of
Education to provide extensive access to
educational-related literature. ERIC provides
coverage of journal articles, conferences,
meetings, government documents, theses,
dissertations, reports, audiovisual media,
bibliographies, directories, books and
monographs.
Cross-references and relations
between descriptors
• Six types of cross- references are used: Scope
Note (SN), Use For (UF) and Use (USE) references,
Narrower Terms (NT), Broader Terms (BT),
Related Terms (RT) and Parenthetical Qualifiers

Example: INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

SN Techniques used to recover specific information from
large quantities of stored data.
• Example: BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES
• UF Bibliographic Records (2004); Bibliographic Utilities
(2004)
LISTA database thesaurus
• LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology
Abstracts) is a bibliographic database made
available by EBSCO. The database offers
searchable cited references, alerts functionality,
author profiles and online tutorials.
Cross-references and relations between
descriptors

• Six types of cross- references are used: Scope

Note (SN), Use For (UF) and Use (USE) references,
Narrower Terms (NT), Broader Terms (BT), and
Related Terms (RT).

Scope Note (SN) example: ACADEMIC librarians

SN Here are entered works on librarians who
manage and maintain college and university
libraries.
THANK
YOU!