What nostalgia! A headline with the phrase "Keyword List". That was a phrase from the decades-ago online searching profession. We had keyword lists galore. We created keyword lists, and we searched via pre-built keyword lists. Keyword lists were key to searching.
Today it was a headline from the Guardian (and others) about documents to provide to the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capital.
The article says keywords include items as simple as "Trump" and "EOP". I am encouraged that they are using simple techniques - these are typically very successful in retrieving relevance. And I am entertained that they are accounting for typos - we have so many today.
I did a lot of Thesaurus work in the 1980s and 1990s. It was fun to build the relationships between words - to take into account synonyms, homonyms, typos, related words and so on. On one consulting assignment, I evaluated thesaurus software for the City of Toronto to integrate pre-amalgamation municipal records given how different the terminology was for the same things. We think sidewalk is a clear thing - not when it comes to municipalities.
The Guardian does not report whether the keyword list is organized by a thesaurus to ensure completeness. That would be a fun exercise.
Would you like to see the search term list? Here it is. Complete with boolean operators and phrase indications. As I say, what a nostalgic moment!
And our pictures? We toot our own horn today about our past work. Or are we letting off steam about our current political affairs? Good fun both ways.
