National Academies Press: OpenBook

Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes (1959)

Chapter: The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue

« Previous: Analytical Study of a Method for Literature Search in Abstracting Journals
Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue

C.S.SABEL

Anyone who has frequently undertaken literature searches will have used the references in material already found as a lead to further material relevant to the subject in which the search is being made. This experience suggests that it might be interesting to investigate the material that can be retrieved in this manner in order to see whether too much effort was perhaps being put into aiming at 100% storage of material and at 100% retrieval of the items (regarded as documents) stored.

The preliminary investigation described here analysed the references contained in the documents from three different sources dealing with the same subject (Controlled thermonuclear reactions).

The A.E.R.E. unclassified reports on radioactivation analysis were also examined to see how far the results from these reports agreed with those obtained from the documents on controlled thermonuclear reactions.

Analysis of references

The 98 documents on controlled thermonuclear reactions studied in this investigation were in three classes. These were: (a) 27 Atomic Energy Research Establishment unclassified reports, (b) 20 published articles by A.E.R.E. authors, other than unclassified reports, (c) 51 United States Atomic Energy Commission unclassified reports, listed in a bibliography prepared by the U.S.A.E.C.

For the purpose of this study, these could be regarded as representing, in each class, a 100% sample of the documents dealing with the subject.

The number of times a document was quoted as a reference in other documents is set out in Table 1, which shows, for example, seventy-seven documents were not quoted as a reference in any other document, twelve documents were quoted as a reference in one other document, etc.

C.S.SABEL Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, England.

Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

TABLE 1 All documents on controlled thermonuclear reactions

No. of documents

Times quoted as reference

77

0

12

1

3

2

6

3

Considering separately within themselves the three classes of documents on controlled thermonuclear reactions, we have Tables 24.

TABLE 2 A.E.R.E. unclassified reports

No. of documents

Times quoted as reference

19

0

4

1

4

2

TABLE 3 A.E.R.E. author’s papers

No. of documents

Times quoted as reference

11

0

4

1

5

2

TABLE 4 U.S.A.E.C. unclassified reports

No. of documents

Times quoted as reference

49

0

2

1

The references in A.E.R.E. unclassified reports on radioactivation analysis, studied as a comparison, gave the breakdown shown in Table 5.

TABLE 5

No. of documents

Times quoted as reference

19

0

4

1

0

2

0

3

1

4

A 25th report, a bibliography, was excluded from Table 5 as the presence of a bibliography in a subject field will obviously have a considerable influence on a search, provided its existence is known. In this case, as the bibliography was recent, none of the other reports included it as a reference. The bibliography included 17 of the 24 reports.

Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

Consideration of Tables 1 to 5

The very high proportion of documents which are not included as references in any other document suggests that a complete retrieval from only some of the documents in a given category is unlikely.

The results were a disappointment from the statistical viewpoint in that it was hoped that they would be amenable to an analysis as, possibly, a binomial distribution. In which case p=k/n where p is the probability of one document being quoted in another document, n is the total number of documents, and k is a constant. With a value for k, it would be possible by weighting the above tables with results from tables of the frequency of quotations in documents to arrive at, say, a 95% certainty of obtaining 100% of the documents by choosing some number less than the total number of documents and examining the references within these documents. However, the sample above was not large enough for one to be statistically categorical and the values of k that were obtained were not consistent. Intuitively it does appear to be true that the probability of a document being quoted in another document is inversely proportional to the total number of documents.

Further analysis

In addition, the results were studied to see whether chains of references existed leading from a few to many documents, and to see how far references in one class of document led to documents in another class.

It was found that for the documents on controlled thermonuclear reactions there were no “key” references which led to a large number of others in the subject, and no document was quoted as a reference in each of the three classes of document. In particular, references tended to be restricted to their own class of document. For example, there was no reference in the A.E.R.E. reports or published papers to give entry to the U.S.A.E.C. reports and only one reference in the U.S.A.E.C. reports to an A.E.R.E. published paper.

Conclusions

Tables 1 to 5 show that the references in an incomplete list of documents are unlikely to indicate more than a small proportion of the remaining documents, and hence one is unlikely to be justified in retrieving less than all the documents that can be found from a subject catalogue.

Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

The further analysis of the references also shows that, in the subject studied, there is no possibility of selecting documents for storage which would in themselves indicate most of the material one would wish to retrieve. The results also indicate the necessity, in planning an information service, of ensuring adequate retrieval of all types of relevant documents.

This is only a preliminary survey and further subject fields and different types of documents should be analysed to see if the restriction of references to documents within their own class is as marked in other fields.

Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×
Page 377
Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×
Page 378
Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×
Page 379
Suggested Citation:"The Relation Between Completeness and Effectiveness of a Subject Catalogue." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×
Page 380
Next: Cost Analysis of Bibliographies or Bibliographic Services »
Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes Get This Book
×
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

The launch of Sputnik caused a flurry of governmental activity in science information. The 1958 International Conference on Scientific Information (ICSI) was held in Washington from Nov. 16-21, 1958 and sponsored by NSF, NAS, and American Documentation Institute, the predecessor to the American Society for Information Science. In 1959, 20,000 copies of the two volume proceedings were published by NAS and included 75 papers (1600 pages) by dozens of pioneers from seven areas such as:

  • Literature and reference needs of scientists
  • Function and effectiveness of A & I services
  • Effectiveness of Monographs, Compendia, and Specialized Centers
  • Organization of information for storage and search: comparative characteristics of existing systems
  • Organization of information for storage and retrospective search: intellectual problems and equipment considerations
  • Organization of information for storage and retrospective search: possibility for a general theory
  • Responsibilities of Government, Societies, Universities, and industry for improved information services and research.

It is now an out of print classic in the field of science information studies.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!