The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has required since 1970 that authors of articles published in AMS journals submit indexing terms with their manuscripts. This study examined 159 documents published by the AMS in 1975. Each contained author indexing terms--class numbers selected by authors from the AMS(MOS) Subject Classification Scheme (1970). Most documents also received indexing terms from professional indexers--Mathemaical Reviews editors. To compare these two indexing treatments, the investigator solicited readers--mathematics faculty and graduate students--to suggest queries to which the documents would be satisfactory responses. The investigator transformed the queries into search statements composed of AMS class numbers, and then he compared search terms with author and with professional indexing terms. A document was retrieved (and recall successful) if at least one search term matched at least one indexing term, under a given indexing treatment.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign