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-Part entry 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 result Computer Aided Subject System (COMPASS) was introduced for BNB from 1991.


POPSI (POstulate-based Permuted Subject Indexing)

Developed by Dr G Bhattacharyya, 1984

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