Step One: Identifying Low-level Topics

Find a document you can use as a model whose information is representative of other documents you want to find.

For example, assume you are developing a topic design to find information on the computer industry. As a start, you build a topic that searches for documents related to Apple Computer and related products.

You use the following sample as a model document whose information is representative of other documents you want to find:

This document makes you decide you want to locate other documents which refer to "Appletalk" and "Macintosh," so you define two parent topic names, apple-software and apple-hardware.

You decide you want to add additional evidence topics to select documents containing related information, such as "Macintosh,"

"Mac Classic," "Quadra," and "Power Mac." In addition, you decide you want to include the evidence topics "AppleTalk" "MacPaint," "MacWrite," and "MacDraw," as related software products. You assign these evidence topics to your apple-hardware and apple-software topics, as follows:

Finally, you want to combine these topics into the topic apple-products, as follows: