pre-coordinateadj.
/ˌpriːkəʊˈɔːdᵻnət/, U.S. /ˌprikoʊˈɔrdənət/ Library Science.
Designating or relating to an indexing language or retrieval system employing terms that consist of several elements combined in a fixed order, which are intended to cover all aspects of the subject matter of a document to which they are assigned. Cf. post-coordinate adj.
ΚΠ
1964 C. D. Needham Organizing Knowl. in Libr. 227 The great advantage of punched cards..lies in the fact that elements of a compound subject can be combined in any order. Such devices are often termed post co-ordinate to distinguish them from the devices that rely on fixed combination order for compounds—the pre-co-ordinate devices.
1970 Aslib Proc. Dec. 611 With co-ordinate indexing, whether post-co-ordinate or pre-co-ordinate, human judgements are deliberately applied.
1979 J. E. Rowley Mechanised In-house Information Syst. i. 38 Thus, many information systems will accept as input some pre-coordinate headings for use in printed products, and post-coordinate headings, or machine selected headings as a basis for machine searching.
1986 S. P. Harter Online Information Retrieval ii. 48 A pre-coordinate system is a controlled vocabulary in which specific, complex subjects involving the intersection of two or more simpler concepts are themselves elements in the indexing language.
2004 Libr. Trends (Nexis) Jan. 515 Precoordinate systems constrain communication between the individual and the system through the establishment of a finite collection of class labels or subject headings that serve as the complete set of possible search queries and predetermine the composition of retrieval sets.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, March 2007; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1964