A system based on associational logic for the interrogation of databases

Abstract

The interrogation of databases of scientific and technical articles is often characterized by the search for documents which do not come from any given specialist domain, but from multiple domains. A real interrogation can be characterized as an original combination of keywords in databases where docu ments are indexed in the form of keywords.

The problem, then, is to find the right documents, while making allowances for the databases own indexing logic for documents.

However, current expert systems, which permit access to documents via rules expressing the relevant field structure, make it notoriously difficult to pass from one specialist do main to another.

Finally, recent work in the sociology of science has analysed the progress of knowledge in terms of 'translations' operating between one network of knowledge or know-how and another. This work has led to the elaboration of word graphs known as 'Leximappe graphs'.

It is suggested that these graphs and the logic of associa tions that supports them can be used not only to interrogate databases of scientific and technical articles but also to search for new combinations at the core of these articles—with a view to advancing knowledge.

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References

This may be just as much the case for illustrations in a popularizing article. See on this subject: Les vues de l'esprit, Culture Technique 14 (1985) p. 280, Centre de Recherche sur la Culture Technique, 69 rue Ch. Laffitte, 92200 Neuilly sur Seine, France and Small et al. op. cit., note 8.

See N.J. Belkin , R.N. Oddy and H.M. Brooks , Ask for information retrieval I; backgrounds and theory; and, Ask for information retrieval II; results of a design study , Journal of Documentation 38 (2) 61-71; and, (3) 145-164.

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Roland Barthes has sketched the elements of a semiological analysis of advertising imagery in: Rhétorique de l'image, Communications 4 (1964) 40-51.

J.L. Laurière , Raisonnement humain et systèmes experts; Cognitiva 85, Colloque Paris, 4-7 June, 1985, pp. 335-342, CESA, 1 rue Descartes, 75005 Paris.

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See M. Callon , J. Law and A. Rip , op. cit. See also W.A. Turner , J.-P. Courtial , S. Bauin and C. Lampart , Les Cartindex des Sciences et des Techniques, Le Documentaliste 21 (1) (1984) 3-13. There are some works which look for an automatic structuration of the databases into fields, sub-fields etc.: see especially H. Small , E. Sweeney and E. Greenlee , Clustering the science citation index using co-citations. II. Mapping Science, Scientometrics 8 (5-6) (1985) 321-340. Equally, certain works in this field show that the processes of self-organization can lead from associations between objects to trees. See on this subject T. Kohonen , Representation of sensory information in self-organizing maps, Colloque Cognitiva, Paris, 4-7 June 1985, pp. 585-592, CESTA, 1 rue Descartes, 75005 Paris.

10.

See U. Berni Canani , Information retrieval et analyse des textes, Congrès "Méthodes quantitatives et informatiques dans l'étude des textes", Nice, June 1985, preprint.

11.

See especially the communication by F. Fogelman-Soulie to the Colloque Cognitiva 85 (op. cit.) on the activating or the deactivating of networks in the connectionist model, Forum, pp. 122-128.

12.

See the different modalities of increase of the two networks in B.C. Papegaaij, V. Sadler and A.P.M. Witkam, Experiments with an M.T. Directed Lexical Knowledge Bank, BSO/Research, P.O. Box B348, 3503 RH Utrecht, Netherlands, 1985, mimeo.

13.

SABIST in the French.