🚀 go-pugleaf

We have a gopher information server set up here (Stanford Knowledge Systems
Lab) which includes various full-text index searches. The indices are
created with the NeXT's Digital Librarian thus facilitating the use of
Boolean operators. This is somewhat of a departure from most gopher indices
which use WAIS (implicit 'or' between any two words).

What I'm wondering is: are there any journal articles, research, etc on the
relative merits of the use of Boolean vs implicit 'or' type searches. I
recall someone mentioning a Salton/McGill article that may have addressed
this very issue. If you know of info along these lines, I would definitely
appreciate hearing about them. Personal experiences would be interesting
too.

I personally enjoy the use of Boolean (and I know I can always stick in
'or's if I want the broadest results). Our user community tends to be
fairly sophisticated and is not too overwhelmed by using Boolean (though it
is amazing how wrong many of the users are in their interpretation of what
a particular search will return).

Torsten