Wired News: Searching Smarter, Not Harder

Students conducting research (and students of research) might wish to learn about topic maps. According to Wired News, "Topic maps are smart indices that improve search capabilities by categorizing terms based on their relationships with other things. For example, William Shakespeare is a topic that would be mapped to essays about him, his plays and his famous quotes."

Once the economy improves in the U.S., we can expect to see search engines, private companies, and others start to integrate topic maps into their search process. As a software engineer for LexisNexis says, ". . . topic maps would allow a LexisNexis query of the word 'Iowa' to differentiate between the University, the state and the jurisdiction. 'It makes sense to present the multiple choices (of context) before returning all of the results' . . .."