Applications of Approximate Word Matching in InformationRetrievalJames

As more online databases are integrated into digital libraries, the issue of quality control of the data becomes increasingly important, especially as it relates to the eeective retrieval of information. The need to discover and reconcile variant forms of strings in bibliographic entries, i.e., authority work, will become more diicult. Spelling variants, misspellings, and transliteration diierences will all increase the diiculty of retrieving information. Approximate string matching has traditionally been used to help with this problem. In this paper we introduce the notion of approximate word matching and show how it can be used to improve detection and categorization of variant forms.