Getting beyond Boole

Abstract-Although most computer-based information search systems in current use employ a Boolean search strategy, there is by no means a clear consensus throughout the information retrieval research community that the conventional Boolean approach is best. The well-known drawbacks of the Boolean design include an inhospitable request formalism, frequent null output and output overload, and lack of provision for differing emphasis on different facets of the search. Nontraditional design principles that over-come these problems are already known and available in the research literature. In this article several such alternative approaches are sketched and their advantages over the Boolean design indicated. In the 195Os, the era in which serious thought was first given to the possibility of computer-ized information searching, it was proposed that search requests might advantageously be formulated as Boolean combinations of document descriptors. This suggestion seemed to meet with the immediate approval of most mathematicians, computer scientists, and tech-nically oriented information professionals. At that time only Bar-Hillel, a mathematical logician, objected strenuously [I]