Leveraging Semantic Analysis Technologies to Increase Effectiveness and Efficiency of Access to Information

Abstract

This presentation will report on the results of a study of 245 publications and reports which were (1) classified to both LCSH for inclusion in a standard library catalog and classified and indexed to an economic development related topic classification scheme and institution specific thesaurus; (2) both manually classified and automatically classified using natural language processing (NLP) semantic technologies. The focus of the comparison is (1) a direct comparison of the quality and quantity of access points across schemes, and (2) the effect of variations on conceptual search (meaning versus word-based search systems). The research collection includes 245 digital publications and reports published by the World Bank which are accessible through OCLC’s WorldCat catalog and through the World Bank’s external web faceted Documents and Reports search system.