The Impact of Specificity on the Retrieval Power of a UDC-Based Multilingual Thesaurus

The article describes the research done over a bibliographic database in order to show the impact the specificity of the knowledge organising tools may have on information retrieval (IR). For this purpose two multilingual Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) based thesauri having different degrees of specificity are considered. Issues of harmonising a classificatory structure with a thesaurus structure are introduced, and significant aspects of information retrieval in a multilingual environment are examined in an extensive manner. Aspects of complementarity are discussed with particular emphasis on the real impact produced on IR by alternative search facilities. Finally, a number of conclusions are formulated as they arise from the study. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]