Seamless Searching of Numeric and Textual Resourcs 

Michael Buckland, Fredric Gey, Ray Larson  
University of California, Berkeley


The dream for the use of new technology in libraries is to support
seamless searching across an increasing range of resources on a growing
digital landscape. The reality is that network-accessible digital
resources, like the contents of a well-stocked reference library, are
quite heterogeneous, especially in the variety of indexing,
classification, categorization, and other forms of "metadata."  The
contribution of this project, funded by a 1999 National Leadership Grant
from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, is to demonstrate
improved access to written material and numerical data on the same topic
when searching two quite different kinds of database: text databases
(books, articles, and their bibliographic records) and numerical data
(socio-economic databases).

Example: From numbers to text 

The Government Information Site at Oregon State University
http://govinfo.kerr.orst.edu/import/import.html has U.S. annual imports
totals extracted from CD-Rom. A search on that source will yield some
surprising numbers: An example could be noticing a sudden increase of
imports into the USA through Los Angeles of shrimp and prawn from Vietnam
and curiosity about the political background and economic consequences.
The numbers show:

                 - - - U. S. I m p o r t s o f M e r c h a n d i s e - - -

                                General Imports: Imports for Consumption
                    SHRIMP/PRAWN SHELL-ON COUNT SIZE 33-45 PER KG FRZN 
                    (HS: 0306130006) (SIC: 0913)
                    Unit of Quantity -- Kilograms
                    FROM: Vietnam THRU: LOS ANG
                          Year
                                        Quantity
                                                                Customs Value
                          1993
                                             0
                                                                          0
                          1994
                                         48,782
                                                                     676,930
                          1995
                                        247,707                   3,520,806 
                          1996
                                        562,427
                                                                   7,864,052


Taking the keywords "Import" and "Vietnam" over to an online bibliographic
databases of newspaper articles retrieves, among others,

Iritani, Evelyn. "Normalizing ties to Vietnam important steps for U.S.
firms; California stands to profit handsomely when barriers fall to trade
with fast-growing country." Los Angeles Times v114 (July 12, 1995):D1.

"Hanoi's trade deficit." New York Times v143 (July 15, 1994):D15(L).
(Vietnam imports increasing faster than exports).

The problem with doing this type of search is that there has, until now,
been no easy path to integrate numeric databases with bibliographic and
textual databases which might contain knowledge about cause and effect.

The problem with doing this type of search is that there has, until now,
been no easy path to integrate numeric databases with bibliographic and
textual databases which might contain knowledge about cause and effect.
The vocabulary which classifies the numeric data may be quite different
from the subject headings used for books, magazine articles, and newspaper
stories about the same topic of interest. Also there needs to be an
environment of search support that facilitates such transverse searching,
establishing connections, transferring data and invoking appropriate
utilities in a helpful way.  Assistance to selecting the best search terms
in the target database is made possible supported by the use of "Entry
Vocabulary Modules," which resemble Melville Dewey's "Relativ Index," but
are created using statistical association techniques developed at
Berkeley.

Two significant problems are encountered when seeking to traverse a search
across from libraries textual resources to numeric databases or vice
versa:

1. The vocabulary which classifies the numeric data may be quite different
from the subject headings used for books, magazine articles, and newspaper
stories about the same topic of interest. For example, searching for
Federal imports data for "automobiles" returns no results, even though
billions of dollars of U.S. foreign exchange goes into auto imports.
Searching under "car" yields data on railroad and tramway rolling stock.
To get automobiles, the searcher needs to know to search under "P" for
"Passenger Motor Vehicle."

2. There needs to be an environment of search support that facilitates
such transverse searching, establishing connections, transferring data and
invoking appropriate utilities in a helpful way.

This project addresses both problems. It is research and demonstration
designed to improve access to library and information resources. It
extends the most recent research in library science to demonstrate and
test a potential solution to a neglected real-world problem: How to
support searches for both numeric and textual databases for information on
the same topic. By demonstration, evaluation, description, and a
www-accessible prototype, any librarian with access to the Internet will
be able to try out this solution. By the free distribution of software all
library system developers will be encouraged to adopt and adapt what is
developed. The research and the prototype to be made available to
librarians and library system developers to test-drive will necessarily
focus on a few carefully chosen resources, but it will be clear that the
same techniques are generally applicable to other online resources.