THE ASM INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM: AFTER CRANFIELD

The ASM Information Retrieval System is currently in process of redesign to incorporate major refinements and improvements resulting from five years of operating experience as well as experience and research of others in the field. Principles and methodology underlying these changes are explored for various components of this system, principally vocabulary, links and roles, and computer hardware and programming. The major change is from semantic code to thesaurus as the system vocabulary, and the relative efficiencies and inherent capabilities of each are compared and related to the general principles of vocabulary control.