Re: RE : aboutness and broader

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Leonard Will <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk>
wrote:
>
>
> True, which is why the document should be indexed with the most specific
> term.
>
> [...]. The search system should be able to distinguish between searches for
> items indexed with the term "animals" and searches for items indexed by the
> term "animals" or any of its narrower terms. This is a function of the
> search system, though, and does not require any special provision in the
> thesaurus structure.
>
> The indexing term "animals" would be assigned to documents which either
>
> a. Deal with animals in general
> b. Deal with several types of animal, too many to index individually
> c. Deal with a type of animal for which no more specific term exists in the
> thesaurus.


The only requirement placed on the syndetic  structure is support for
 hierarchical relationships between terms such that  the narrower term is a
proper subset of the broader one;  otherwise upward posting  and the rule of
three (for suitable values of three)  don't work, and the use of specific
terms will cause recall to drop.  Unfortunately, SKOS as it now stands
doesn't support this kind of relationship.

Simon