Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : Sep/Oct 2002

Interactive Searching with Dialog Profound

Retrieving relevant information on Dialog Profound is made simple with the InfoSort indexing terms. Each article on Profound is indexed with InfoSort terms that describe the content and themes within the article. Using this indexing, users can retrieve relevant information without having to rely on free text searching.

There are three InfoSort fields:

• Market sector — the industry or market covered by the document
• Location — the location covered by the document
• Scope — the angle or scope of the article — e.g., market shares, forecasts, mergers and acquisitions.

Finding the best InfoSort terms to use is simple using the InfoSort Navigator. InfoSort is based on a hierarchy of terms, running from broader — e.g., telecommunications, to narrower — e.g., telephones. The InfoSort Navigator allows users to browse through broader, narrower or related terms until they find the terms that best meet their search needs.

A new feature on Profound makes using this indexing even easier. Users can now see all the market sector, scope and location terms that have been used to index an article. Broader terms are also given, surrounded by parentheses. See Figure 1.

This allows a more interactive search process — users can see how the documents of most interest to them have been indexed and use these indexed terms to make their searches or Alerts more focused and relevant.

Refining searches has also been made easier with a feature that allows users to carry out related searches without having to return to the search page. At the bottom of each document, the indexing used in that document is shown in a set of search boxes. See Figure 2 below.

Figure 2

Users can scroll through these lists and select terms to use for a new search. Free text terms can also be added if needed.

These features allow researchers to make full use of the detailed indexing on Profound to retrieve relevant information instantly.

top