Filing, Filtering, and the First Few Found
Michael K. Buckland, Barbara A. Norgard, Christian Plaunt · 1993
Card catalogs are dominated by the alphabetical arrangement of the catalog records. Alphabetical arrangement has been carried over to online catalogs, with some unfortunate consequences. Alphabetical order is reconsidered in relation to the purposes of catalogs and differences in catalog technology. Document ranking, subset ranking, and adaptive filtering are examined as alternatives to alphabetizing records in online catalogs. Record display ordinarily involves a secondary retrieval process. 1 Introduction It has been customary to arrange catalog records alphabetically by main entry in book-form catalogs, card catalogs, and, now, online catalogs. There has been some disagreement over details of filing concerning, for example, the treatment of numerals and the choice between "letter-by-letter" and "word-by-word". A "categorical" arrangement, departing from strict alphabetization, has been used in some special cases, notably in the arrangement for prolific authors, of historical subdiv...