Search across different media : Numeric data sets and text files

Digital technology encourages the hope of searching across and between different media forms (text, sound, image, numeric data). Topic searches are described in two different media: text files and socioeconomic numeric databases and also for transverse searching, whereby retrieved text is used to find topically related numeric data and vice versa. Direct transverse searching across different media is impossible. Descriptive metadata provide enabling infrastructure, but usually require mappings between different vocabularies and a search-term recommender system. Statistical association techniques and natural-language processing can help. Searches in socioeconomic numeric databases ordinarily require that place and time be specified.