Automatic Indexing: An Experimental Inquiry

@article{Maron1961AutomaticIA,
  title={Automatic Indexing: An Experimental Inquiry},
  author={M. E. Maron},
  journal={J. ACM},
  year={1961},
  volume={8},
  pages={404-417}
}
  • M. Maron
  • Published 1 July 1961
  • Computer Science
  • J. ACM
This inquiry examines a technique for automatically classifying (indexing) documents according to their subject content. The task, in essence, is to have a computing machine read a document and on the basis of the occurrence of selected clue words decide to which of many subject categories the document in question belongs. This paper describes the design, execution and evaluation of a modest experimental study aimed at testing empirically one statistical technique for automatic indexing. 
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522 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
111
Methods Citations
155

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References

On Relevance, Probabilistic Indexing and Information Retrieval
TLDR
The paper suggests an interpretation of the whole library problem as one where the request is considered as a clue on the basis of which the library system makes a concatenated statistical inference in order to provide as an output an ordered list of those documents which most probably satisfy the information needs of the user.