Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
humans, syntactic processes now have been transferred to machines. In
contrast, syntactic aspects of searching involve human understanding
of syntactic processes. Syntactic processes—activities such as ordering
retrieved records or eliminating duplicate records—increasingly are trans-
ferred to technology. With premodern technologies, ordering records by
date or by author would have been accomplished at the point of retrieval
by description labor or direct human syntactic labor. Modern search
technologies can invoke different orderings, transferring human labor to
machine processes.
Compared with syntactic processes, the syntactic aspects of search-
ing correspond to human understanding of syntax. Specific components
for understanding include Boolean logical combinations, their computa-
tional derivatives, their realization in system commands, and the likely
effects of specific combinations. Many consider Boolean logic difficult to
grasp, although its difficulty may have been exaggerated.
4
The adoption
of computational technologies has resulted in some public understand-
ing of Boolean logic. Boolean operators are characteristically realized
in contrasting system commands, although the underlying commonality
should be recalled. Early studies indicated that the number of system com-
mands used had little effect on system performance (Barraclough 1977).
However, differences in commands made it difficult for searchers to adapt
from one system to another. Similar to the material aspects of searching,
syntactic aspects have improved through simpler system design, and also
through coevolving consciousness.
Semantic components center on translating a topic into a searchable
query, the most complex aspect of retrieval (Roberts 1977, 15; 1989).
The process may remain difficult, but its nature—the social distribu-
tion of expertise and the distribution of labor between description and
searching—may be changing due to alterations in description processes.
Semantic understanding and expertise with premodern technologies
involved understanding the type and particular characteristics of descrip-
tion labor applied to those documents, including the language of subject
representation. With modern systems, understanding the documents' lan-
guage of discourse and the effects of generating automatic representations
of those documents may become more significant, likely involving a social
redistribution of expertise toward those fully familiar with the language
of discourse.
