Revisiting the Preserved Context Index System (PRECIS): The Bridge between Hierarchically Structured Thesauri and Facetted Classifications

Kwasnik, Barbarak (2004) Revisiting the Preserved Context Index System (PRECIS): The Bridge between Hierarchically Structured Thesauri and Facetted Classifications . In Breitenstein, Mikel, Eds. Proceedings 15th Workshop of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Special Interest Group in Classification Research, Providence, Rhode Island.

Abstract

This presentation will address the difficult task of representing complex concepts in a text in a way that reflects their contextual meaning. The preservation of context enables the disambiguation of a termís possible multiple senses, and also shows how the term is being used. In developing these ideas we revisit an indexing system called PRECIS, which was developed by Derek Austin in the early 1970s for subject indexing for the British National Bibliography, and subsequently developed by him with the assistance of Mary Dykstra into a adaptable method of linking both the semantics and syntax of indexing terms.