© Haworth Press, Inc.
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Cataloging & Classification Quarterly |
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Volume 37, no. 3-4, 2004 |
The Thesaurus: Review, Renaissance and Revision
Sandra K. Roe, Alan R. Thomas
special issue guest editors
INTRODUCTION
The thesaurus within the context of information retrieval was
developed approximately 50 years ago in an environment quite different from the
one we find ourselves in today. While paper-based formats like printed books and
printed serials remain, new formats continue not only to emerge but to
proliferate. A recent OCLC report tells us that annual production projections
for digital materials by the year 2007 are too large to estimate [1]. Beyond the
challenge of new formats and the quantities and interrelationships of those
formats, additional layers of complexity are added as national libraries,
bibliographic utilities, and other private and governmental entities work toward
bilingual and multilingual subject access within and across online collections
and catalogs. Despite all that distances us from 50 years ago, there is this
commonality: an interest in thesauri. There is an unprecedented interest in
thesauri and related types of vocabulary switching tools not just within the
library community but also from the business community, information architects,
and linguists. For instance, Rosenfeld and Morville in Information Architecture
for the World Wide Web predict that “thesauri [will] become a key tool for
dealing with the growing size and importance of web sites and intranets [2].”
In this time of renewed interest in thesauri, this collection of papers is
designed to serve three purposes. The first purpose is to acquaint or remind the
Library and Information Science (LIS) community of the history of the
development of the thesaurus and the standards for thesaurus construction.
Aitchison and Dextre Clarke, both active in standards development, provide a
rich historical piece that takes the reader from the first use of the word
‘thesaurus’ in the context of information retrieval to the present day
challenges of interoperability and end-user usability.
The second purpose of this collection is to provide bibliographies and tutorials
from which any reader can become more grounded in her or his understanding of
thesaurus construction, use, and evaluation. In “Teach Yourself Thesaurus,”
Thomas outlines the skills one needs to create a thesaurus and supplies the
reader with sources of additional readings for each. To provide an opportunity
to practice these skills, Shearer presents a series of exercises intended to
teach the process of building a thesaurus from an alphabetical list of terms. In
contrast to Thomas’ paper, Nielsen’s presentation of readings is organized by
the technical processes involved in thesaurus construction and the particular
problems related to each, including methodologies to gain knowledge about an
information environment through the study of information seeking behavior. Do
you want to hire a thesaurus consultant or become one yourself? Will’s article,
“Thesaurus Consultancy,” outlines the steps in a thesaurus project and reviews
the roles and functions of both the consultant and the client. Owens and
Cochrane describe evaluation methods which can be applied to a thesaurus as it
is being created or used to evaluate an existing one.
The third purpose is to address topics related to thesauri but that are unique
to the current digital environment, or network of networks. Greenberg presents
the results of a query-expansion study that explores user comprehension and
application of the thesaurus in the ABI/Info database. Johnson proposes a
distributed thesaurus Web service while Riesland presents criteria for
evaluating vocabulary management software packages. In “Multilingual Subject
Access,” Landry describes the MACS project which links equivalent headings in
English, French, and German subject heading lists so that users can access
online catalogs in the language of their choice. To close, Amy Warner describes
NISO’s current initiative [3] to revise Z39.19 Guidelines for the Construction,
Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri in an interview with the editors.
Taken together, these papers are intended to inform the reader about thesaurus
construction, its history and development, and speculate on its future. While it
seems clear that the skills involved in thesaurus construction will continue to
serve us well, it is less certain whether the thesaurus will be our next
generation vocabulary switching tool of choice. That function may be carried out
by some form of taxonomy, ontology, mind map, or something as yet unnamed and
undefined. Among developments to monitor in this rapidly changing information
environment will be the work of various standards making bodies and the new
audiences and applications for their work.
Sandra K. Roe
Alan R. Thomas
The editors would like to express their appreciation to Jeff A. Jenson for his
assistant in verifying the citations throughout this collection of articles.
[1]. Five-Year Information Format Trends (Dublin: OCLC Library and Information
Center, 2003) p. 1. Available online at URL:
http://www.oclc.org/info/trends/.
[2]. Rosenfeld, L. and P. Morville. 2002. Information Architecture for the World
Wide Web. 2nd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, p. 188.
[3]. National Information Standards Organization. “Developing
the Next Generation of Standards for Controlled Vocabularies and Thesauri”
(Bethesda: NISO, 2003). Available online at URL:
http://www.niso.org/committees/MT-info.html.