A Large-Scale Comparison of Boolean vs. Natural Language Searching for the TREC-7 Interactive Track.
William Hersh, Susan Price, Dale F. Kraemer, Benjamin K S Chan, Lynetta Sacherek, Daniel Olson · Text REtrieval Conference · 1998
Studies comparing Boolean and natural language searching with actual end-users are still inconclusive. The TREC interactive track provides a consensus-developed protocol for assessing this and other useroriented information retrieval research questions. We recruited 28 experienced information professionals with library degrees to participate in this year’s TREC-7 interactive experiment. Our results showed that this was a highly experienced group of searchers who performed equally well with both types of systems.