Coordinate Indexing Adapted to Office Files: Results of Experimental Application of Coordinate Indexing to Office Correspondence and Files

摘要

A two-year experimental application was carried out to determine the potential of coordinate indexing in retrieval of office correspondence and management documents. The study was carried out in several small staff offices of a military R+D organization. The results show that coordinate indexing is easy to apply, offers significant operational and retrieval advantages, and appears to contribute to good office morale. These gains are balanced against the increased input costs and the requirement for considerable changes in management and secretarial attitudes. Coordinate indexing is, therefore, recommended for adoption in all situations where there is a need for rapid and accurate retrieval of documents from multisubject files and where the multiple users require unaided access to those files. Where such conditions do not exist, i.e., where the files contain essentially the same type of documents and where retrieval is infrequent, the increased input costs may outweigh any gained advantages. (Author)