Indexing consistency in MEDLINE

The quality of indexing of periodicals in a bibliographic data base cannot be measured directly, as there is no one "correct" way to index an item. However, consistency can be used to measure the reliability of indexing. To measure consistency in MEDLINE, 760 twice-indexed articles from 42 periodical issues were identified in the data base, and their indexing compared. Consistency, expressed as a percentage, was measured using Hooper's equation. Overall, checktags had the highest consistency. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and subheadings were applied more consistently to central concepts than to peripheral points. When subheadings were added to a main heading, consistency was lowered. "Floating" subheadings were more consistent than were attached subheadings. Indexing consistency was not affected by journal indexing priority, language, or length of the article. Terms from MeSH Tree Structure categories A, B, and D appeared more often than expected in the high-consistency articles; whereas terms from categories E, F, H, and N appeared more often than expected in the low-consistency articles. MEDLINE, with its excellent controlled vocabulary, exemplary quality control, and highly trained indexers, probably represents the state of the art in manually indexed data bases.     

比较图书馆学教育

<正> 尽管图书馆有着漫长的历史,但是"图书馆学校除美国早期的以外,却主要是二十世纪的产物".在布赖姆莱(G. Bramley)的这个论断之外,还应该加上丹顿(J. P. Danton)的观察,即在美国、欧洲以外的世界其它地方的图书馆学校显然都是在第二次世界大战之后才兴办起来的.对世界各地图书馆学校进行研究、比较,就会发现以下一些问题,诸如专业协会的影响逾越了国界;改变高等教育的形式影响一些国家图书馆学校的建立;学校数量的递增产生了对师资的需