Subject

Subject Domain in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Subject Domain in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Subject Domain may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. The subject domain of an Information Retrieval database sets the subject scope into the context of the work or life situation (the domain) in which users will be operating and seeking messages. Typical domains include the various scholarly disciplines, the professions, industries, business, occupations and trades, but also every other sphere of human life and activity, such as sports and recreation, hobbies, religion, entertainment, travel, relationships, child rearing, and home management. Subject domains also include cultural domains, often characterized by such human attributes as economic level, living environment, religious and ethnic heritage, gender, sexual orientation, and age. Subject domain analysis will differentiate between interests and needs in the same subject area for users operating in different subject domains, such as persons seeking novels for entertainment versus literary scholars; week-end soccer players versus sociologists of sport or students of sports medicine; urban high-income African American gay men seeking health information versus low-income, rural, white migrant worker pregnant women. In medicine, for example, researchers, health care practitioners, patients, the general adult public, and children all occupy different subject domains.