A Scalable Approach for Question Based Indexing of
Encyclopedic Texts

Christopher Wisdo

The Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University
1890 Maple Avenue
Evanston, Illinois, USA
wisdo@ils.nwu.edu


Abstract. This paper describes a tool set developed to aid a human
content analyst index texts for use in a particular form of structured
hypermedia known as an ASK System. The tool set assists the content
analyst by employing a library of question templates to represent the
types of questions the output ASK system might contain. Question
templates provided roughly a six-fold increase in the rate with which
texts are indexed compared to manual techniques. Indexing progress is
linear throughout, indicating that the methodology can be used to
effectively index a large body of texts.

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