Indexing

INDEXING is the process by which a vocabulary of keywords is assigned to all documents of a corpus. Mathematically, an index is a {\em relation} mapping each document to the set of keywords that it is on} mapping each document to the set of keywords that it is pping each document to the set of keywords that it is each document to the set of keywords that it is document to the set of keywords that it is nt to the set of keywords that it is the set of keywords that it is t of keywords that it is eywords that it is s that it is it is \about.

The inverse mapping captures, for each keyword, the documents it DESCRIBES :

This assignment might be done manually or automatically. MANUAL INDEXING means that people, skilled as natural language users and perhaps also with expertise in the domain of discourse, have read each document (at least cursorily) and selected appropriate keywords for it. AUTOMATIC INDEXING refers to algorithmic procedures for accomplishing this same result. Because the Index relation is the fundamental connection between the users' expressions of information need and the documents that can satisfy them, this simply-stated goal, ``Build the Index relation'', is at the core of the IR problem and FOA generally.

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