From: Joshua Duberman <DUBERMAN@crvax.sri.com>
Date: Tue,  3 SEP 91 11:59:58 PDT 




   As a professional data delver/database detective/on-line computer
literature searcher, I often see myself searching a vast dark warehouse
with a penlight, trying to see the numbers on the aisles, rows, columns,
crates. Once I find a likely item, I examine it closely and find others
like it, as if those Russian dolls or boxes that fit inside each other
could be larger on the inside than they appear on the outside. Papers 
have been written concerning theoretical aspects of Information Retrieval
that try to come up with schemes for mimicking all aspects of searching 
actual libraries, such as serendipity (seeing a book that could relate to
your subject on a book cart as you pass it in the library stacks, a book
you never would have seen otherwise), MANY aspects of subject searching 
(including a "switching thesaurus" or automatic synonym matching & 
searching function), and even color and size (a big red book with a 
picture on the cover). It's not surprizing that our analogies and images
for searching are based on our previous experience; we are hoping that this
new medium can and will enable development of new analogies and languages
which can be more useful in all senses. As poetry and music is to prose,
so would this new search language be to our current, rigidly defined query
languages.

                                                   Josh Duberman


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