PARAGRAPH-BASED ACCESS TO FULL-TEXT DOCUMENTS USING A HYPERTEXT SYSTEM

This paper considers the use of a hypertext system, GUIDE, for paragraph-based searching in full-text documents. Searching can be effected in GUIDE using both a conventional, word-based approach and using the inter-textual linkage facilities. The effectiveness of these retrieval techniques are evaluated by means of searches of three full-text documents for which relevance data are available. The results of the searches are compared with those obtained from use of a nearest neighbour retrieval system that has been developed for the ranking of paragraphs within full-text documents. The comparison suggests that the linkage facilities in hypertext do not provide a very cost-effective mechanism for paragraph-based retrieval.