Masking
Facility in information retrieval. Also termed "internal truncation". Single characters in a search term is replaced by a symbol, which may mean either:
an arbitrary sign
no sign or an arbitrary sign
Different systems use different symbols to indicate the
masking command, such as ? or #. (Concerning the standardization of such symbols
see CCL).
Example: In a given search is both records containing the word "women" as
records containing the word "woman" wanted. This can be done in different ways.
In Boolean search the logical operator "OR" may
be used: "Search women or woman" or the word may be masked "wom#n".
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 02-05-2006