Surrogation

Surrogate/Surrogation in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Surrogate/Surrogation in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Surrogate/Surrogation may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. A surrogate is a representative. A message/text/document surrogate stands in the place of the original full text containing the message of interest. A message/text/document surrogate represents only certain key aspects of a message, text, and documentary unit. Its nature and content will depend on the nature and content of the full documentary unit and the needs of users. Typical components are citations, index terms, headings, or descriptors, abstracts, and thumb-nail illustrations. See also record.

Surrogate Display in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Surrogate Display in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Surrogate Display may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Surrogates are almost always displayed in stages in both print and electronic Information Retrieval databases. The purpose is to provide to users only what is useful at a particular stage of a search. Surrogate display deals with what portions of surrogates to display and how best to order the elements of a surrogate display in various situations.