Pre- Coordinate Indexing Systems

Cutter’s Rules for Dictionary Catalogue 1876

·         It was Charles Ammi Cutter who first gave a generalised set of rules for subject indexing in his Rules for a Dictionary Catalogue (RDC) published in 1876.

·         Cutter never used the term ‘indexing’; he used the term ‘cataloguing’.

Kaiser’s Systematic Indexing, 1911

·         Developed by Julius Otto Kaiser

·         It is a systematized alphabetical subject heading practice

·         Kaiser was the first person who applied the idea of Cutter in indexing micro documents in the library of Tariff Commission as its librarian

·         He categorized the component terms into two fundamental categories: (1) Concrete and (2) Process.

·         Concrete refers to l Things, place and abstract terms, not signifying any action or process; e.g. gold, India, Physics, etc.

·         Process refers to

*Mode of treatment of the subject by the author

*An action or process described in the document

*An adjective related to the concrete as component of the subject. In short, Kaiser’s achievements regarding subject indexing are:

·         categorization of composite terms through classificatory approach for the first time;

·         a general rule of order of precedence, i.e. the ‘process’ term should follow  the ‘concrete’ term;

·         definition of those terms, of which ‘process’ is identified properly, that is, he         gave the characteristics of ‘process’ by which it can be identified properly;

·         double entry system for a subject dealing with place/locality; and elaborate system of references.

Chain Indexing

·         Developed by Dr. S. R. Ranganathan

·         It is also called / known as “chain procedure”

·         It is a method of deriving alphabetical subject entries from the chain of successive subdivisions of subjects needed to be indexed leading from general to specific level

·         According to Ranganathan, chain indexing is a “procedure for deriving class index entry (i.e. subject index entry) which refers from a class to its class number in a more or less mechanical way.”

·         The term ‘chain’ refers to a modulated sequence of subclasses or isolates

Relational Indexing

·         devised by J. E. L. Farradane in 1950

·         This indexing systems also known as the “System of Relational Analysis”

·         Two or more isolates linked by relational operators

·         Relational operators are special symbols which link the isolates to show how they are related and each operator is denoted by a slash and a special symbol having unique meaning

·         Farradane’s marked improvement in the area of subject indexing was:

                        ** analysis of relationship among terms;

                        ** use of relational operators; and

           ** one to one relationship among analets.

Coates’s Subject Indexing

·         Developed by E. J. Coates

·         From the contributions of Cutter, Kaiser and Ranganathan, the concept of Term Significance was drawn

·         Coates has developed the idea of Thing and Action like Kaiser’s Concrete and Process

PRECIS (PREserved Context Index System)

·         Developed by Dereck Austin in 1974

·         an alternative procedure for deriving subject headings and generating index entries for British National Bibliography (BNB) which since 1952, was following Chain Indexing.

·         Syntax and Semantics of PRECIS

            PRECIS consist of two inter-related sets of working procedures:

           

                        1. Syntactical

                        2. Semantic.

·         The PRECIS is based on two principles

1.      Principle of Context Dependency

2.      Principle of One-to One Relationship

·         to achieve the principle of context-dependency, Two-Line-Three-Partentry structure is followed in PRECIS

·         Formats of PRECIS Index : There are three kinds of format in PRECIS:

1.      Standard Format,

2.      Inverted Format and

3.      Predicate Transformation

COMPASS (Computer Aided Subject System)

·         In 1990, it was decided to revise UKMARC and to replace PRECIS by a more simplified system of subject indexing As a resultComputer Aided Subject System (COMPASS) was introduced for BNB from 1991.

POPSI (POstulate-based Permuted Subject Indexing)

Developed by Dr G Bhattacharyya, 1984