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| Does anyone have any comments on why someone would use a subject
| index on a cd-rom rather than use a general search?
| It seems obvious to me that a subject index has many advantages but what
| do you think?
Because full text search can only find the word if it actually exists in
the text (seems like a really obvious thing to say, but...) and a well
designed index also contains likely synonyms that people may search for
but are not contained in the text.
Also, a full text query will show you every place in the text that a
word occurs, but a well designed index will only show you the places
where the term is the object of discussion, not the places where it
just happens to show up in some ancillary way.
