Essential Thesaurus Construction

Citation

Smith, A.G. (2006), "Essential Thesaurus Construction", The Electronic Library, Vol. 24 No. 6, pp. 866-867. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470610714288

The thesaurus is the quintessential librarian's professional tool. Particularly in specialist information centres, librarians create specialised thesauri, update and apply them. Other information professionals are applying thesauri concepts in records management, museums, and intranets. Aitchison, Gilchrist & Bowden's Thesaurus construction and use, a practical manual (2000) has been the standard work in this area for many years. Broughton's work aims to provide a more practical emphasis, while following a similar approach.

Essential thesaurus construction is based on a taught course at University College London, in which students create their own model thesauri. The use of practical examples, and discussion of alternative approaches, indicate the author's experience in practice and teaching.

The book starts with a discussion of the different types of thesaurus; the relationship to other vocabulary tools such as subject headings, ontologies and topic maps. Taxonomy construction is implicitly included despite the author's scepticism that taxonomies are more than a more “scientific sounding” name for structured classificatory languages. There is a relatively brief summary of the argument for thesauri rather than natural language in information retrieval.

There are examples from a range of thesaurus and metadata applications, from student exercises, to indexing & abstracting service descriptors, to government website metadata. Broughton points out that the Web is now a good place for “thesauri touristing”, including such gems as the “Acce$$ to A$ian Vegetable$ Thesaurus”.

There is more detailed examination of specific thesauri such as the BSI Root Thesaurus and the online Art and Architecture Thesaurus. This leads into a detailed methodology for creating information retrieval thesauri, starting with the gathering of vocabulary from literature, online sources, and group concept mapping exercises. The book follows the development of a model animal welfare thesaurus, including exercises (with answers) to illustrate the process, and includes the finished model thesaurus as an appendix. There is detailed practical advice about vocabulary, forms of words, punctuation, etc. The different needs of vocabulary for objects (for example in a museum collection) are discussed.

Broughton discusses the complementary relationship between the subject based systematic display and the traditional alphabetic display. She argues strongly for the power of facet analysis in dealing with complex concepts: “ideas” as opposed to “things”. Accordingly, she approaches the construction of the systematic display using facet analysis methodology, and moves from there to the alphabetic display, and the development of a basic classification.

There is a chapter on the maintenance of thesauri, addressing the issue of what happens after – many enthusiastically created thesauri have ultimately failed due to underestimation of the importance of maintenance as the vocabulary and subject domain changes. Thesaurus building software is treated relatively briefly at the end of the book. Arguably the intellectual work of structuring a thesaurus and choosing terms is largely independent of the software used to manage and maintain the thesaurus. However there are useful examples of software, sources of information, and guidelines for selection of software. Appendices include basic standards, references, and a glossary of terminology in the area of subject retrieval.

One area that is largely ignored is the role of the thesaurus in providing access to documents in the online digital environment. While the traditional thesaurus should be a valuable tool in websites, intranets, and digital libraries; Broughton has relatively little discussion of the implications of this on thesaurus practice.

But this is a relatively minor criticism. Essential thesaurus construction is an ideal instructional text, with clear bullet point summaries at the ends of sections, and relevant and up to date references, putting thesauri in context with the general theory of information retrieval. But it will also be a valuable reference for any information professional developing or using a controlled vocabulary.