The effect of link and posting upon a retrieval system which employs descriptors

To evaluate the effects of linking and posting in the International Nuclear Information System (INIS), three descriptor files, i.e. normal, no-linking and no-posting, for about 40 thousand items of literature were searched with 41 test profiles. The following were revealed. 1) Linking does not function as anticipated, because so many indexing words were assigned to each document. 2) Posting functions effectively owing to the sophisticated chain structure of the INIS thesaurus, and reduces greatly the efforts required for both indexing and profiling. It also facilitates recall. (auth.)