An Operating System of Building Information

A Case History of Applied Research, conducted jointly by teams at Washington University, St. Louis, the Universite de Montreal and the University of California at Los Angeles.

This project is described as applied research; it has grown up, in response to the information system needs of "Industrialization Forum" - a quarterly publication at Washington University and the University of Montreal. Experience shows the advantages of coordinate indexing for information storage and retrieval, compared to subject classification; procedures are described and the importance of a controlled vocabulary common to the indexer and searcher is discussed. Generation of the Thesaurus of Common Noun Key Words needs careful study; new logical rules have been devised for establishing hierarchies of terms - these introduce the new relationship: Part Term/ Whole Term to the current Narrower Term/Broader Term. In addition, the concept of Proper Noun Keywords is introduced and their role in information storage and retrieval discussed.