Semiotics and indexing: an analysis of the subject indexing process

Abstract

This paper explains at least some of the major problems related to the subject indexing process and proposes a new approach to understanding the process, which is ordinarily described as a process that takes a number of steps. The subject is first determined, then it is described in a few sentences and, lastly, the description of the subject is converted into the indexing language. It is argued that this typical approach characteristically lacks an understanding of what the central nature of the process is. Indexing is not a neutral and objective representation of a document’s subject matter but the representation of an interpretation of a document for future use. Semiotics is offered here as a framework for understanding the “interpretative” nature of the subject indexing process. By placing this process within Peirce’s semiotic framework of ideas and terminology, a more detailed description of the process is offered which shows that the uncertainty generally associated with this process is created by the fact that the indexer goes through a number of steps and creates the subject matter of the document during this process. The creation of the subject matter is based on the indexer’s social and cultural context. The paper offers an explanation of what occurs in the indexing process and suggests that there is only little certainty to its result.

Folksonomia: a linguagem das tags

“…Ela não toma como referência o modo como um fenômeno específico significa, mas o porquê e como o significado se constitui (MAI, 2001 O símbolo talvez seja a tipologia sígnica mais famosa e mais consensual. Devido às características do universo empírico e aos objetivos deste estudo, optou-se pela pesquisa qualitativa, pois essa modalidade se volta para a abordagem de fenômenos em que a subjetividade, a significação, as estruturas e processos sociais se fazem presentes, constituindo um nível da realidade em que dificilmente se obtém compreensão com o uso de abordagens quantitativas (MINAYO, 2009).…”

Barriers to Open Access Publishing: Views from the Library Literature

“…Grandbois and Beheshti [26] chose to search for the term "open access" in the article title in the LISA database. However, subject indexing can add search precision to results by providing control for synonyms, homographs, and related terms [32] However, it is important to note that there are inherent problems with the subject indexing process which can result in missed indexing [33]. Using subject indexing to generate the sample data does not represent an absolutely complete corpus of open access publishing related papers.…”

A semi-automatic indexing system based on embedded information in HTML documents

“…In the academic literature, indexing process involves two main steps: one, identifying the subjects of the document, and two, representing them in a controlled language (Mai, 2001). This process is also known as subject indexing, in which the representation of the documents is conditioned by the controlled language structure.…”