ABOUTNESS: THE HUMAN
FACTOR
soasis&t
Aboutness: Automatic Indexing
& Categorization
June 21, 2001
Inherent contradictions?


Indexing, cataloging, classification depend on
ability to discover and label topics in data
A consistent, controlled, classification scheme
facilitates
– Data analysis & visualization
– Intra-document linking by taxonomy nodes
– Investigative analysis of content
(Shewhart June 21, 2001)

The world cannot be organized into a single
coherent vocabulary (Tobias 1996 )
Aboutness—The view from TREC-9


The notion of “aboutness” is considered as a
set of terms evoking a subject concept, which is
hopefully shared by many people including
authors, indexers and the users of the system
(Fujita 2000)
In almost all computer applications, users must
enter correct words for the desired objects or
actions. For success without extensive training.
. . the system must recognize terms that will be
chosen spontaneously. We studied spontaneous
word choice for objects . . . and found the
variability to be surprisingly large. In every case
two people favored the same term with
probability <0.20. (Furnas et al. 1987)
The Human Factor— Whose concept?

A subject authority file (or a controlled
vocabulary list or a thesaurus or list of
approved topics or selected key words) is
essential to an indexing project because is
maintains consistency and accuracy.
(Semonche 1993, p. 373)
The Human Factor—The right label


HEMMER: So . . . the FBI mess right now. . . why you believe
we were led to this point, to the FBI documents?
HARRIS: Well, you know, most people. . . do word searches.
And the same in Lexis legal research. You put a word in and
you can find any document in which that word appears.
Unfortunately, the FBI does not use that system in its
document storage. They use indexes. So the index is only
as good as the indexer. So if I index a certain document in
certain ways, and for example, in the yellow pages, if you
look under refrigerators, you won't find anything. You have
to go to major appliances. And because the FBI uses this
kind of an indexing system, I understand that it is very
difficult to retrieve each and every document that might
be relevant. (CNN May 31, 2001, Bill Hemmer interview
with Jeffrey Harris, Former Federal Prosecutor)
— Consistently applied

At most 90 percent of the Census returns are
correctly classified by the human editors, and
the Dow Jones editors achieve only 83 percent
recall and 88 percent precision when compared
to an “expert” editor. . . . Human systems set the
targets for acceptable levels of inconsistency
and error for an automated system. (Fidel 1993,
p. 285)
Indexing is about access

Topics are inherently fuzzy

Searchers are naive

All documents retrieved should be relevant

All relevant documents should be retrieved
Exercise

What are the articles about?
– Note language that is evidence of aboutness
– Is there more than one subject in the document?
– What is their relative importance to overall meaning?

Assign index terms
–
–
–
–
Select from list of subject terms
Apply all relevant terms
Rank terms in order of importance to the document
Note prominent subjects that are NOT on the
approved list
Discussion

Major References

Minor References, Subtopics

Document types
–
–
–
Survey
Summary
Review
Bibliography





Albrechtsen, Hanne. Subject analysis and indexing: from
automated indexing to domain analysis. The Indexer 16:234-8
Farrow, John. All in the mind: concept analysis in indexing. The
Indexer 19:243-7
Fidel, Raya, Trudi Ballardo Hahn, Edie M. Rasmussen, Philip J.
Smith. Challenges in Indexing Electronic Text and Images. ASIS
monograph. Medford, N.J.: Learned Information, 1994.
Fujita, Sumio. Reflections on “aboutness”: TREC-9 evaluation
experiments at Justsystem. Proceedings of the Ninth Text
REtrieval Conference (TREC-9 ), Gaithersburg, MD, November
13-16, 2000. Available as of June 18, 2001 at
http://trec.nist.gov/pubs/trec9/t9_proceedings.html
Furnas G, T.K. Landauer, L.M. Gomez, S.T. Dumais. The
vocabulary problem in human-system communication.
Communications of the ACM 1987 (30): 964-71.
Bibliography
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

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Semonche, Barbara. Newspaper indexing policies and
procedures. In News Media Libraries: A Management
Handbook. Westwood, CT: Greenwood,1993.
Star, Susan Leigh. To classify is human. Keynote talk,
Hypertext 96, Champaign-Urbana, GLIS, March 3, 1996.
Tobias, Jennifer. Seeking the subject. Library Trends 47
(1998), no. 2: 209-17
Weinberg, Bella Hass. Why indexing fails the searcher. The
Indexer 16:3-6.
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
May 9, 2001, Wednesday
TUCSON, Ariz.
Trial renewed for man who blamed slayings on alien orders
A man sentenced to death for two murders he blamed on orders
from space aliens will not attend his second trial.
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Associated Press State & Local Wire
December 27, 200
LAS VEGAS
Las Vegas minor league team adopts out-of-this-world Area 51 image
The mascot and theme music possibilities are, well, otherworldly.
Known for 18 years as the Stars, Las Vegas' minor league baseball
team is remaking itself. They're not the Blackjacks, Royal Flushes or Silver
Dollars, but the 51s, as in Area 51, the famously top-secret test site in the
Nevada desert oft-rumored to be the mysterious location of captured UFO
spacecraft and even alien beings.
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Business Wire January 30, 2001, Tuesday
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 30, 2001
Atlantis Group and Alien Voices Form an Extraterrestrial Alliance
Atlantis Group, Inc., an audio recording and post-production
studio,announces an alliance with Alien Voices, a multimedia production
company co-owned by Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie, veteran actors
of the cult classic sci-fi series, "Star Trek."
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Los Angeles Times
May 24, 2001 Thursday
YUMA, Ariz.
12 Border-Crossers Die, 4 Still Missing in Desert
At least 12 men trying to cross a remote stretch of scorching desert
from Mexico into southwestern Arizona died from exposure Wednesday and
a search was launched for additional victims.
Southern Arizona has become a popular crossing point for illegal
immigrants since Border Patrol crackdowns in Texas and California
prompted people to try to enter the United States through more isolated,
inhospitable areas. Scores have died from exposure.
It is believed that some of the undocumented immigrants were from the
state of Veracruz.
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The New York Times
May 30, 2001, Wednesday
Panel Advises Quarantine for Any Material From Mars
Rocks and soil brought back to Earth from Mars by a future space
mission should be handled as if they were chock full of deadly microbes, even
though they will almost certainly prove lifeless, a panel of experts said
yesterday.
Upon arrival on Earth, the material should be quarantined in a special
laboratory similar to those used to study Ebola and other highly contagious,
lethal diseases, the panel said, and unless it is completely devoid of any
possible signs of life, it should be sterilized through heat or radiation before
being released to researchers outside of the quarantine
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ORGANIZATION: AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION (59%); NATIONAL
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CHANG, KENNETH JOHN A WOOD (59%)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 8, 2001 Friday
"EVOLUTION" DESCENDS FROM A LONG LINE OF MOVIES;
BUT IT IS THE CAST THAT MAKES THE LIGHTWEIGHT COMEDY WORK.
Half the movies at the multiplex are really just an excuse for Hollywood
to show off its toys. From computer-generated imagery to surgically
enhanced bodies, summer movies are all about spectacle. Often, the
difference between good and bad (that is, the difference between a "Shrek"
and a "Pearl Harbor") is the quality of the script that the producers drape
over the effects. But in the case of "Evolution," this effects-laden comedy
succeeds because of the easygoing charm of its stars.
DAVID DUCHOVNY (94%); ORLANDO JONES (85%); IVAN REITMAN (52%);
DANIEL EDWARD 'DAN' AYKROYD (51%)
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AP Worldstream
February 26, 2001; Monday
WASHINGTON
Study: Crystal in meteorite proves life once existed on Mars 1/4
A crystal found in a meteorite from Mars could only have been formed
by a microbe and may be evidence of the oldest life form ever found, U.S.
researchers say.
Scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston say that a
crystalized magnetic mineral, called magnetite, found in Martian meteorite
is similar to crystals formed on Earth by bacteria.
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Business Wire
June 12, 2001, Tuesday
FAIRFAX, Va., June 12, 2001
Xybernaut's Wearable Computer Chosen for Mars Training Mission in Northern
Canada; Mobile Assistant to be Integrated Into Space Suit
Xybernaut(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:XYBR), the leader in mobile
wearable computing and wireless communications, today announced that it
has been chosen to provide its Mobile Assistant(R) wearable computers for
the 2001 Haughton-Mars Project (HMP).
Heavily funded through NASA and the non-profit SETI (Search for
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, this research project is dedicated to
the exploration of the planet Mars.
COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS ELECTRONIC GAMES/MULTIMEDIA
GOVERNMENT HARDWARE SOFTWARE
VIRGINIA INTERNATIONAL CANADA CANADA (89%);
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(90%); WIRELESS & BROADCAST EQUIPMENT
Tampa Tribune
June 11, 2001, Monday
Fast Forward
Air pollution and infants: Pollution in our atmosphere may be
responsible for as much as 9 percent of infant deaths in the United States,
concludes a study by an international team of researchers. Investigators
evaluated air quality in eight cities from 1995-97 and compared it to total
infant mortality in the same period, eliminating such variables as race,
education and marital status.
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