Chapter 9. Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata

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Chapter 9.Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and
Metadata
Part 1 Thesauri

• ICS 691
• Leslie Wood Yoko Kudo
• Nov. 10, 2003

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Thesaurus pl. Thesauri

• Derived from Greek storehouse
• Book of synonyms
• related and contrasting words, antonyms
• Semantic network of concepts
• connect words to their other words of network

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Thesaurus

• Thesaurus as a traditional ref. tool
• (example Roget Thesaurus)
• Connect words to their synonyms, antonyms,
  broader and narrower terms..
• One word ? Many words
• Online Thesaurus
• map many synonyms onto one preferred term for the
  site.
• Many words? One word

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Semantic Relationshipsin a Thesaurus
Hierarchical
Equivalence
Equivalence
Associative
Associative
Hierarchical
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Semantic Relationship in a thesaurus

• Preferred Term (PT) Center of its network
• Subject heading, Descriptor
• Variant Term (VT) Non preferred terms
• Broader Term (BT) Parent of PT
• Narrower Term (NT) Child of PT
• Related Term (RT) Associative relationship

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Semantic Relationship in a thesaurus

• Inspec

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Semantic Relationship in a thesaurus

• Used For (UF)
• Use Preferred Term for the following Variant
  Terms.
• Use (U) See
• Use the following Preferred Term instead of this
  Variant Term.
• Scope Note (SN)
• A specific type of definition of the preferred
  Term.

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Semantic Relationship in a thesaurus

• Eric

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Semantic Relationship

• How can the relationships in a thesaurus be used
  for effective information retrieval and
  navigation system?
• Equivalence Relationship
• Hierarchical Relationship
• Associative Relationship

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Semantic Relationship

• Equivalence

• Group terms defined as equivalent for the
  purpose of retrieval
• Synonym Management
• (synonym ring, entry term)

PT VT
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Semantic Relationship

• Entry Term
• Variant Terms that can be linked to the Preferred
  term on the system.

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Semantic Relationship

• Hierarchical

• Classification of PT
• Categories/Subcategories
• Types of hierarchical relationship
• Generic
• NT is a member of BT
• Whole-part
• NT is a part of BT
• Instance
• NT is an instance of BT

NT
NT
BT
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Semantic Relationship

• Library and Information Science
  Abstracts              

Card catalogs and CD-ROM catalogs are. examples
of Catalogs. Instance relationship
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Semantic Relationship

• Associative

• Strongly implied semantic connections that arent
  captured within the other two relationships.
• connect users to related products and services.
• Pants and Shirts etc..

RT(PT)
RT(PT)
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Semantic Relationship

• Associative
• Relationship Subtype
• Field of Study and Object of study
• Process and its Agent
• Concepts and their Properties
• Action and Product of Action
• Concepts Linked by Causal Dependence

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Thesaurus Standard

• Guideline for how to construct Thesauri
• ISO 2788
• BS5723
• AFNOR NFZ 47-100
• DIN 1463
• ANSI/NISO Z39.19

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Thesaurus Standards

• Scope (From ISO web page)
• The recommendations set out in this
  International Standard are intended to ensure
  consistent practice within a single indexing
  agency, or between different agencies (for
  example members of a network). They should not be
  regarded, however, as mandatory instructions.
• Field of Application (From Abstract for ANSI/NISO
  Z39.19)

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Thesaurus Standards

• Advantages
• Good thinking, good intelligence
• Useful from a technology integration
• Better chance of cross-database compatibility
• Disadvantages
• Need to pay attention to the difference
• Traditional paper thesauri (for experts)
• Current online thesauri (for novice users)

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Preferred Terms

• Term Form
• Term Selection
• Term Definition
• Term Specificity

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Preferred Terms

• Term Form
• Grammatical form Nouns preferred
• Spelling Select a defined authority
• Singular or Plural Plural of count nouns,
• Singular of conceptual nouns
• Abbreviations
• and acronyms Default to popular use.

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Preferred Terms

• Term Selection
• Think about your goal and how preferred terms
  will be used on your site.
• Term Definition
• Control the specificity in the use of language.
• Parenthetical term qualifiers
• Scope Note

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Preferred Terms

• Parenthetical Term Qualifiers
• (from DDC)
• Allies (Military powers) 355.031
• Allies (World War 1 group) 940.332
• Allies (World War 2 group) 940.533

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Preferred Terms

• Term Specificity
• Use of the compound terms
• ? think the size of your site

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How to get to ERIC database
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