A Journey from Cutter to Austin: Critical Analysis of their Contribution in Subject Indexing

This write-up presents the fundamentals of subject indexing in terms of its development, scope, coverage, role in subject indexing techniques and the important elements to design a well-structured and effective subject indexing process, requirements and the infrastructure. From the time of RDC to PRECIS, the developers has been envisaged the problems to expand the flexibility and versatility of indexing technique. Whenever one indexing process is failed to achieve the maximum efficiency another is developed on the basis of failure. It concludes that all the developments of subject indexing processes during that era are leads to the innovation of Artificial Intelligence technique (AI), i.e. Natural Language Processing (NLP) by implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in present time.