> Lexis: unveiled its new natural language technology which
> they are calling "Freestyle." An associative retrieval
> algorithm ranks documents in order of relevancy. After
> processing your natural language search, the system displays
> the results and a menu of choices which allows you to either
> review the results or further refine your search by
> selecting from a list of options such as identifying
> mandatory terms or entering date restrictiors. One
> interesting feature called "superkwic" allows you to select
> the most statistically relevant documents. A feature called
> "where" which allows you to review a graphical table showing
> which of your search terms appear in which of the 25 most
> relevant documents.
Now this sounds interesting. One of my biggest concerns with WIN
is that I couldn't find a way to override the computer's determination
of which words were really important. It looks like we will have
the option of tell the computer in Freestyle that some terms just
have to be there. Of course we haven't had a chance to play with
Freestyle yet, so we don't know what it's weaknesses are. But maybe
West is listening and will modify WIN to allow searchers to specify
that certain terms are required and perhaps even to change the
computer's ranking of which are the most important. But lets hope
that we get the chance to work with Freestyle for several months
to learn about it ourselves before it is unveiled to the students.
Mary Brandt Jensen University of South Dakota
Director of the Law Library School of Law
Professor of Law 414 E. Clark St.
MJENSEN@CHARLIE.USD.EDU Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
(605) 677 6363 Fax (605) 677 6357
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