The nature of indexing: how humans and machines analyze messages and texts for retrieval - Part I: Research, and the nature of human indexing

Abstract Does human intellectual indexing have a continuing role to play in the face of increasingly sophisticated automatic indexing techniques? In this two-part essay, a computer scientist and long-time TREC participant (Perez-Carballo) and a practitioner and teacher of human cataloging and indexing (Anderson) pursue this question by reviewing the opinions and research of leading experts on both sides of this divide. We conclude that human analysis should be used on a much more selective basis, and we offer suggestions on how these two types of indexing might be allocated to best advantage. Part one of the essay critiques the comparative research, then explores the nature of human analysis of messages or texts and efforts to formulate rules to make human practice more rigorous and predictable. We find that research comparing human vs automatic approaches has done little to change strongly held beliefs, in large part because many associated variables have not been isolated or controlled. Part II focuses on current methods in automatic indexing, its gradual adoption by major indexing and abstracting services, and ways for allocating human and machine approaches. Overall, we conclude that both approaches to indexing have been found to be effective by researchers and searchers, each with particular advantages and disadvantages. However automatic indexing has the over-arching advantage of decreasing cost, as human indexing becomes ever more expensive.