Page 136 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

OU Shiyan, TANG Zhengui & SU Feifei / Construction and usage of terminology services for information retrieval 135

four usage modes of terminology services in information retrieval systems.
The first usage mode is multiple choice for query expansion. As shown in Figure 9, this mode is
to expand the query term input by a user. The user can select one or more terms from the narrower
terms, broader terms, related terms, synonymous terms or English translations returned by
terminology services to expand the original query term. To make the user operate easily, this mode
also provides a “Select All” short-cut button. The user can check all the terms in a specific category
(e.g. all the related terms) with this button, and then the system automatically combines the original
query term with the checked terms to form a new search query. To help the user know the impact
of his/her choice, the user’s checking or unchecking operation can be reflected immediately in the
current search query located at the bottom of the interface.

Figure 9. Terminology service usage mode 1: Multiple choice for query expansion.

The second usage mode is single choice for query replacement. As shown in Figure 10, this
mode is to replace the query term input by a user. The user can select one term from the narrower
terms, broader terms, related terms, synonymous terms or English translations returned by
terminology services to replace the original query term, for example, replace with a broader term
to expand search scope, and replace with a narrower term to narrow search scope. To reduce the
redundancy of user operations, this mode combines term selection and query execution together.
After the user clicks a specific term, the system directly replaces the original query term with this
clicked term and executes information retrieval.