Extending the Vocabulary Available for Cross-Disciplinary Searching of Earth Science Data

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a prototype search assistant designed to aid cross-disciplinary searching of Earth science data. The goal of the project is to provide aids to help searchers overcome the vocabulary problem: the vocabulary used by the searchers is not the same as that used by the indexers. The work was motivated by vocabulary issues existing in the EOS Data Gateway (EDG) at the time this work began. (The EDG is the interface for searching and ordering Earth science data products from NASA and affiliated centers.) We describe the status of the project and give examples of the techniques that we are using. We also discuss the way in which we are implementing a new search paradigm, multiple viewpoints, within our prototype.