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Thesauri - Archive

What is a thesaurus?

  1. a storehouse or repository, as of words or knowledge;
  2. a reference work in which the entries are arranged not in alphabetical order, but in groups, each item being notionally related to the others in the same group;
  3. a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms Macquarie Dictionary.

Agencies spend a great deal of time and money producing documents and records. You need to find this information quickly and easily. A thesaurus provides control over the vocabulary used for information. The result is increased efficiency: less time is spent searching for the information required and the retrieval of the right information, when it is needed, is assured.

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What is happening in Government and elsewhere with Thesauri Development and its application to websites

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Augmenting Thesaurus Relationships

Augmenting Thesaurus Relationships: Possibilities for Retrieval, Douglas Tudhope, Harith Alani and Christopher Jones. Journal of Digital information, volume 1 issue 8, 2001. "This paper discusses issues concerning the augmentation of thesaurus relationships, in light of new application possibilities for retrieval...."

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AGIFT

Australian Governments' Interactive Functions Thesaurus (AGIFT)

The Australian Governments' Interactive Functions Thesaurus (AGIFT) is a recently released National Archives initiative designed to complement the ‘Function' element of the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS). AGIFT aims to help end-users searching government websites to retrieve relevant results by linking natural language terms with their bureaucratic equivalents. For example, AGIFT enables a user interested in government information on ‘kindergartens' to focus their search on the government term ‘early childhood education'.

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On the 26 November 1999 The National Archives of Australia released the following media release...

AGIFT Breaks the Language Barrier!

A brilliant new online thesaurus that links plain English words with terms used by governments has been developed by a consortium of government and educational institutions.

Called AGIFT (Australian Governments' Interactive Functions Thesaurus), it matches everyday words such as 'school' or 'kindergarten' with the various terms that government might use, like 'early childhood education'. The thesaurus covers the functions of all three levels of government, so that government services can be described consistently across Australia.

Adrian Cunningham, Director, Recordkeeping and Descriptive Standards at the National Archives, said that the Archives had liaised closely on the project with other Commonwealth agencies, State, Territory and Local Governments, as well as some educational institutions.

'The thesaurus draws on 300 000 natural language terms from sources such as Roget's Thesaurus, as well as terms used in the Archives' Commonwealth-based functions thesaurus. The interactive process between the user and the thesaurus means a query can be refined before the search begins', Mr Cunningham said.

The thesaurus was developed in response to direction from the Online Council of Ministers to support the exploitation of Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata, for which the standard is managed by the Archives.

Metadata is essentially information about information. In a web document it is usually hidden text which is scanned by a search engine when searching for a document. In effect, metadata is a form of indexing.

'This search interface is designed for use by any government Web access point, such as the proposed ''Governet'' at www.gov.au , the Commonwealth Government Web entry point at www.fed.gov.au or from the Archives website at www.naa.gov.au ', Mr Cunningham said.

For further information please contact:
Adrian Cunningham on (02) 6212 3988
or adrianc@naa.gov.au
26 November 1999

The media release is on the Web at: http://www.naa.gov.au/Publications/media_releases/agift.html

Adrian Cunningham
National Archives of Australia

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AGTERMS Thesaurus

In August, 1999 the new thesaurus, Agterms Thesaurus for Australian Agricultural Extension Information (Agterms) was launched. The Information Management team at the Kondinin Group, Ruth McIntyre and Ling Heang, have developed this thesaurus, with funding from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), and participation by a wide range of information specialists.

The Agterms thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary of keywords to be used to describe Australian agricultural extension information. Agterms is intended to be used in conjunction with the CAB Thesaurus, published by CAB International. With the publishing of Agterms Australia will have a national thesaurus of agricultural extension terms being made available to all information professionals for the first time. Agterms will have a variety of uses for information professionals - subject cataloguing, indexing, and metatagging electronic material including websites.

Agterms is being marketed on a subscription basis, with two updates each year - in January and July. It is being widely adopted by the industry, including being used on the Agrigate site <agrigate.edu.au>. A companion classification scheme, Agdex Adapted for Use in Australia was also published in August. (27 September 1999).

Agterms is being priced at $130 for a 12 month subscription. Agterms is published in a looseleaf binder with biannual updateds. It will be also offered in PDF format on Cd Rom.

Agterms is available from:

Kondinin Group
Reply Paid 89
PO Box 913
Cloverdale, WA 6105		 or
Freecall: 1800 677 761
Freefax: 1800 657 509
Email: orders@kondinin.com.au
Web Site: http://www.kondinin.com.au
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The Anti Thesaurus

The Anti-Thesaurus: A Proposal For Improving Internet Search While Reducing Unnecessary Traffic Loads, by Nicholas Carroll. Hastings Research, November 19, 2001. Summary - In the continual struggle between search engine administrators, index spammers, and the chaos that underlies knowledge classification, we have endless tools for "increasing relevance" of search returns, ranging from much ballyhooed and misunderstood "meta keywords", to complex algorithms that are still far from perfecting artificial intelligence. Proposal: there should be a metadata standard allowing webmasters to manually decrease the relevance of their pages for specific search terms and phrases.

The Anti-Thesaurus Part 2: Expansion of Proposal for Increasing Search Relevance, by Nicholas Carroll. December 19, 2001.

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Beyond Bookmarks

Beyond Bookmarks - Schemes for Organizing the Web is a clearinghouse of World Wide Web sites that have applied or adopted standard classification schemes or controlled vocabularies to organize or provide enhanced access to Internet resources. Beyond Bookmarks is compiled and maintained by Gerry McKiernan, Science and Technology Librarian and Bibliographer, Science and Technology Services Department, Iowa State University Library, and Curator, CyberStacks(sm), Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011

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Beyond the Spider

Beyond the Spider: The Accidental Thesaurus, by Richard Wiggins. The Searcher, v.10.no.9, October 2002. "Robot software can help us in many ways. It can also be stubbornly literal - and even foolish at times. Think of Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, blathering unnecessary minutiae endlessly when asked a simple historical or scientific question...."

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Bubl Link

BUBL LINK is the name of a catalogue of selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas and catalogued according to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification). All items are selected, evaluated, catalogued and described. Links are checked and fixed each month. LINK stands for Libraries of Networked Knowledge.

BUBL 5:15 provides an alternative interface to this catalogue, based on subject terms rather than DDC. The aim is to guarantee at least 5 relevant resources for every subject included, and a maximum of 15 resources for most subjects, hence the name 5:15. Big subject areas are broken down into smaller categories. However, the upper limit of 15 is not rigidly applied, so there may be up to 35 items for some subjects.

The subject terms used in BUBL LINK / 5:15 were originally based on LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) but have been heavily customised and expanded to suit the content of the service. The aim is to make it very easy to locate Internet information about a large number of subjects.

Of particular interest is the section on Library and Information Science

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Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

Bella and Yakov and Tillie's Panties: What I Learned in “Construction and Maintenance of Indexing Languages and Thesauri”, by Jeanette Ezzo. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 31, No. 4, April/May 2005. "Jeanette Ezzo is the research director of JPS Enterprises, a company in Takoma Park, Maryland, that specializes in medical education materials. She took Dagobert Soergel's LBSC775 course at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a non-degree student when the company received a grant to develop an indexing language for studies on spirituality and health. The graduate course, "Construction and Maintenance of Index Languages and Thesauri," required developing a piece of a thesaurus, pilot testing the indexing language, evaluating thesauri and writing a paper on what was learned in the course. This paper fulfilled that final course requirement..."

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Canada

Canada - Implementing Controlled Vocabulary on Government of Canada Web Sites - Updated 30 August 2002.

Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus - January 30, 2004 - A revised edition of the Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus is now available...

Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) on the Web - CSH on the Web will be of interest to catalogers or other library professionals who are interested in providing subject access to Canadian materials. Created by the National Library of Canada (NLC), CSH on the Web is an online version of NLC's Canadian Subject Headings, the complement to Library of Congress Subject Headings that focuses specifically on Canadian topics. This Web version offers a freely searchable database of about 6,000 subject headings, representing the entirety of the third edition of the printed version, as well as its revisions through numerous supplements. In addition to providing full subject authority records in both thesaurus and MARC21 display formats, CSH on the Web also includes access to a .pdf version of the CSH Lists of Subdivisions. The entire site is available, of course, in either English or French, and is kept current with monthly updates.

Thesauri and controlled vocabularies - Library and Archives Canada

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Controlled Vocabularies

Creating a Controlled Vocabulary, by Karl Fast, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel. Boxes and Arrows, April 7, 2003. "You have probably heard IAs discussing the benefits of their latest taxonomy project and how you should be implementing one. But how, you might wonder, can you get started? This article describes a process for building your own controlled vocabulary (CV). A previous article discussed the concept of a CV—the “what.” This article focuses on the “how.”..."

Vocabulary Mapping for Terminology Services, by Diane Vizine-Goetz, Carol Hickey, Andrew Houghton and Roger Thompson. Journal of Digital Information, Volume 4 Issue 4, Article No. 272, 11 March 2004. "Abstract - The paper describes a project to add value to controlled vocabularies by making inter-vocabulary associations. A methodology for mapping terms from one vocabulary to another is presented in the form of a case study applying the approach to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Thesaurus and the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Our approach to mapping involves encoding vocabularies according to Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) standards, machine matching of vocabulary terms, and categorizing candidate mappings by likelihood of valid mapping.  Mapping data is then stored as machine links. Vocabularies with associations to other schemes will be a key component of Web-based terminology services. The paper briefly describes how the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is used to provide access to a vocabulary with mappings."

NISO Z39.19-200x Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies . "Abstract: This standard presents guidelines and conventions for the contents, display, construction, testing, maintenance, and management of monolingual controlled vocabularies. This standard focuses on controlled vocabularies that are used for the representation of content objects in knowledge organization systems including lists, synonym rings, taxonomies, and thesauri...Status: Currently Balloting. Balloting Period: April 11, 2005 to May 25, 2005"

Tomatoes are not the only fruit - a guide to controlled vocabularies. govtalk.gov.uk, 29 April 2005. "A personal interpretation of the differences between taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies..."

W3C - Working Drafts: Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) - 2005-05-10: The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group released three First Public Working Drafts: SKOS Core Guide, SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification, and a Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web. The drafts explain how to express classification schemes, thesauruses, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary in RDF. Previous SKOS work was supported by the European project SWAD-Europe....

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DC-ANZ Thesaurus

Call for participation in DC-ANZ-Thesaurus - The DC-ANZ committee has approved the launch of the DC-ANZ-Thesaurus special interest group.This group hopes to be a valuable forum for those people interested in the use of controlled vocabularies in metadata cataloguing. We are seeking people interested in presenting 'virtual papers' and in people willing to moderate discussions arising from the monthly papers. We are also inviting members interested in becoming part of this new group. To join - DC_ANZ_Thesauri-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or go to - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DC_ANZ_Thesauri and click "join this group" To view the proposal for the operation of the group go to- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DC_ANZ_Thesauri/files/Administration/

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Dublin Core Subject Qualifiers

A small number of subject thesauri "blessed" by the DC Usage Committee, the list is located at: http://purl.org/DC/documents/rec/dcmes-qualifiers-20000711.htm#subject

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FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)

FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology): A Simplifed LCSH-Based Vocabulary, by Edward T. O'Neill, OCLC, Dublin, USA and Lois Mai Chan, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA. World Library and Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council, 1-9 August 2003, Berlin, Code Number: 010-E, Meeting: 126. Classification and Indexing. - in pdf format. (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader) (192kb) ABSTRACT: The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) schema is by far the most commonly used and widely accepted subject vocabulary for general application. It is the de facto universal controlled vocabulary and has been a model for developing new subject heading systems around the world. However, LCSH’s complex syntax and rules for constructing headings restrict its application by requiring highly skilled personnel and limit the effectiveness of automated authority control. Recent trends, driven to a large extent by the rapid growth of the Web, are forcing changes in bibliographic control systems to make them easier to use, understand, and apply, and subject headings are no exception. The purpose of adapting the LCSH in a faceted schema with a simplified syntax is to retain the very rich vocabulary of LCSH while making it easier to understand, control, apply, and use. The FAST schema maintains upward compatibility with LCSH, and any valid set of LC subject headings can be converted to FAST headings. FAST consists of eight distinct facets. Authority records have been created for all established headings except for the chronological facet. The initial version of the FAST authority file will contain approximately two million authority records..."

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Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)

The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) - The TGN is a structured vocabulary containing more than one million names and other information about places. The TGN includes all continents and nations of the modern political world, as well as historical places. It includes physical features and administrative entities, such as cities and nations. The emphasis in TGN is on places that are important for art and architecture...

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GILS

GILS - US State Government's Thesauri - Subject lists the US State government sites have used when implementing the GILS metadata

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Health Thesaurus

The Health Thesaurus is used for subject terms in the resource metadata for HealthInsite. It has a hierarchical structure so that similar types of terms (eg names of diseases) are clustered together.

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HILT

HILT - High-Level Thesaurus is a one year project jointly funded by the RSLP and JISC. The purpose of the project is to study and report on the problem of cross-searching and browsing by subject across a range of communities, services, and service or resource types.

  • HILT - High-Level Thesaurus Project - Building Consensus for Interoperable Subject Access across Communities, by Susannah Wake and Dennis Nicholson.D-Lib Magazine September 2001 Volume 7 Number 9. "Abstract- This article provides an overview of the work carried out by the HILT Project <http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk> in making recommendations towards interoperable subject access, or cross-searching and browsing distributed services amongst the archives, libraries, museums and electronic services sectors. The article details consensus achieved at the 19 June 2001 HILT Workshop and discusses the HILT Stakeholder Survey."
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Keyword AAA

Keyword AAA - Issued by New South Wales State Records Management Office Keyword AAA replaces the existing General Administrative (GADM) Thesaurus, which since 1979, has been the most successful thesaurus of general terms designed specifically for public sector agencies. At present it is used in some 140 organisations at the Commonwealth, State and local government levels.

Keyword AAA provides control over the vocabulary used for titling and indexing records by is, essentially, an alphabetical listing of terms that may, and may not, be used for titling and indexing. This produces consistency which, in turn, makes it easier and faster to search for and retrieve records by limiting the number of terms required for a successful search. It is based on a solid body of principles and methods known as the Keyword Classification System and is effectively the closest we have to an Australian standard public sector records management thesaurus.

Keyword AAA is designed to be used in conjunction with your organisation's unique "functional" terms and can be integrated with records management software.

Keyword AAA - an introduction provided by the National Archives of Australia

  • A report on the use of Keyword AAA in Commonwealth Agencies is available from the National Archives of Australia and is entitled: "A Thesaurus of General Terms for the Commonwealth: ASSESSMENT OF KEYWORD AAA", by Marian Hoy Assistant Director Government Services 14 April 1998.
  • Using Keyword AAA - how Keyword AAA supports the classification of electronic documents as well as paper filing systems.
  • Developing a functions thesaurus: Guidelines for Commonwealth Agencies - These guidelines provide practical advice to Commonwealth agencies to help them develop a functions thesaurus. The thesaurus covers an agency's unique functions identified in a business classification scheme.
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Library of Congress

Library of Congress

  • Library of Congress Authorities - "Using Library of Congress Authorities, you can browse and display authority headings for Subject, Name, Title and Name/Title combinations. You can also download authority records in MARC format for use in a local library system. This service is being offered on a trial basis so that we can assess its usefulness and impact...."
  • Library of Congress - Thesauri (note use Netscape to access this)
    • Thesaurus for the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) - The English-language thesaurus now used for The Global Legal Information Network's multi-national database of legislation has been under continuous development since 1950. It is unusual (and possibly unique) among legal finding tools both because of its pragmatic, "not-until-needed" manner of development and its multi-faceted approach to indexing world legislation.
    • Legislative Indexing Vocabulary (LIV) - A thesaurus developed by the Congressional Research Service for use with legislative and public policy material.
    • Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (TGM I) - A thesaurus consisting of thousands of terms and numerous cross references for the purpose of indexing visual materials.
    • Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms (TGM II) - A thesaurus of more than 600 terms, developed by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, with input from other archival image repositories.
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MetaNet

MetaNet - A Metadata Term Thesaurus to Enable - Semantic Interoperability Between Metadata Domains, by Jane Hunter. Journal of Digital information, volume 1 issue 8, 2001. "Metadata interoperability is a fundamental requirement for access to information within networked knowledge organization systems...."

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Mind your phraseology

Mind your phraseology! Using controlled vocabularies to improve findability, By Christina Wodtke. Digital Web Magazine, August 2002. "Many moons ago I waited tables. One day our manager came down to tell us that from now on we were to refer to our customers as "guests." We also were to refer to courses as "first course" and "second course." Our chef was French, and found the American use of "entrée" for the main course annoying--in French "entree" means appetizer. This was my first experience with a controlled vocabulary...."

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NZGLS

NZGLS Thesauri (FONZ and SONZ) - The approved thesauri for support of the New Zealand Government Locator Service (NZGLS) metadata standard is the Functions of New Zealand thesaurus (FONZ) which supports the Function element and the Subjects of New Zealand thesaurus (SONZ) which supports the Subject element.

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Publications on Thesaurus Construction and Use

Publications on thesaurus construction and use. Willpower Information - Information Management Consultants. Revised 15 April 2002. "This is a list of printed and electronic publications about the principles of constructing and using information retrieval thesauri. ..."

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Reengineering Thesauri for New Applications

Reengineering Thesauri for New Applications: the AGROVOC Example, by Dagobert Soergel*, Boris Lauser, Anita Liang, Frehiwot Fisseha, Johannes Keizer and Stephen Katz. Journal of Digital Information, Volume 4 Issue 4, Article No. 257, 17 March 2004. "Abstract - Existing classification schemes and thesauri are lacking in well-defined semantics and structural consistency. Empowering end users in searching collections of ever increasing magnitudes with performance far exceeding plain free-text searching (as used in many Web search engines), and developing systems that not only find but also process information for action, requires far more powerful and complex knowledge organization systems (KOSs). The paper presents a conceptual structure and transition procedure to support the shift from a traditional KOS towards a full-fledged and semantically rich KOS. The proposed structure also complies with other interoperability approaches like RDFS and XML in the Web environment. AGROVOC, a traditional thesaurus developed and maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, serves as a case study for exploring the reengineering of a traditional thesaurus into a fully-fledged ontology. We start the process of developing an inventory of specific relationship types with well-defined semantics for the agricultural domain and explore the rules-as-you-go approach to streamlining the reengineering process."

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Schools Online Thesaurus Project

The Schools Online Thesaurus project - ... a joint venture between Curriculum Corporation, The Le@rning Federation and education.au limited to develop a thesaurus for describing the subjects of online curricula content in the Australasian K–12 education sector...

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Semantic Problems of Thesaurus Mapping

Semantic Problems of Thesaurus Mapping, by Martin Doerr. Journal of Digital information, volume 1 issue 8, 2001. "With networked information access to heterogeneous data sources, the problem of terminology provision and interoperability of controlled vocabulary schemes such as thesauri becomes increasingly urgent. Solutions are needed to improve the performance of full-text retrieval systems and to guide the design of controlled terminology schemes for use in structured data, including metadata. ..."

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Software for building and editing thesauri

Software for building and editing thesauri - This is a list of software for the development and editing of information retrieval thesauri. Willpower Information, Last amended 2003-06-10

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TAGS

TAGS - Thesaurus of Australian Government Subjects - Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO)

"TAGS is a thesaurus of subject terms for use by Commonwealth agencies which:

  • Covers, at a high level, subject concepts representing the scope of Commonwealth government activities;
  • Provides a potential source of terminology for portal browse lists; and
  • Provides a subject vocabulary which is broader than the detailed vocabularies already adopted by some agencies, but which is able to function as an introduction to those detailed vocabularies, or to serve as a controlled vocabulary for those agencies without a specialised one.

In addition, it conforms with ANSI/NISO Z39.19, Guidelines for the Construction, Format and Management of Monolingual Thesauri - the standard for structure and organisation of information retrieval thesauri. It is a hierarchical thesaurus which uses a "tree" structure starting with broad concepts which then break down to narrower concepts. There is a maximum of 3-4 levels in each hierarchy. This is complemented by 17 high-level clusters, or 'Subject categories', that collect together related terms..."

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Taxonomies and Thesauri

Taxonomies and Thesauri. govtalk.gov.uk, 1 March 2005. "This bibliography has been prepared for the e-Government Unit's taxonomy working group. It is intended to help workers throughout the UK public sector as they plan implementation of taxonomies for use with Subject metadata."

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Thesaurus Principles and Practice

Thesaurus principles and practice - This paper was originally presented at a workshop "Thesauri for museum documentation" held at the Science Museum, London, on 24th February 1992. The proceedings of the workshop have been published by the mda (formerly the Museum Documentation Association). Willpower Information, Revised 13th February 1998

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Thesaurus WG Survey on controlled Vocabularies

Thesaurus WG Survey on Controlled Vocabularies,  UKGovTalk, 6 May 2003. This document provides details of thesauri, taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies used by public sector organisations. It is based on a survey carried out by the Thesaurus Working Group in Spring 2003, but also includes findings from earlier survey... [the document is no longer available on the UKGovTalk website]

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United Kingdom

Design/selection criteria for software used to handle controlled vocabularies. Office of the e-Envoy, December 2002. "This document has been prepared in the context of practical implementation of the Government Category List (GCL), a controlled vocabulary that forms part of the Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS). The e-GMS requires the Subject metadata of every resource entered to include at least one term drawn from the GCL (assigned either individually or to a file or folder of resources of which this item forms a part)..." The document is available in word format. (132kb)

UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT) project

  • "The UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT) project is a 17 month project to create a subject thesaurus for the UK archive sector. We aim to create a controlled vocabulary which archives can use when indexing their collections and catalogues..."

New Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary to be ready as from 1st April. Public Technology, 25 February 2005. "The Local eGovernment Standards Body has said that the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary can be implemented as from 1st April 2005. This product will bring together the three main controlled vocabularies available to public sector bodies in one merged vocabulary or taxonomy. The vocabulary can be used to populate Subject Metadata and index and categorise information across the public sector..."

IPSV-Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary - "The Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV) is an ‘encoding scheme’ for populating the e-GMS Subject element. It is fully compliant with ISO 2788 (= BS5723) the International and British Standard for monolingual thesauri. The vocabulary was developed with the backing of the ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) and the eGU (Cabinet Office e-Government Unit)..."

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UNESCO Thesaurus

The UNESCO Thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation which includes subject terms for the following areas of knowledge: education; science; culture; social and human sciences; information and communication; and politics, law and economics. It also includes the names of countries and groupings of countries (political, economic, geographic, ethnic and religious, and linguistic groupings).

As in other subject thesauri, the terms in the UNESCO Thesaurus are linked together by three types of relationships:

  • Hierarchical relationships, which link terms to other terms expressing more general and more specific concepts (broader terms and narrower terms).
  • Hierarchically related terms are grouped under general subdivisions (known as "microthesaurus headings"), which in turn are grouped into the areas of knowledge covered by the Thesaurus.
  • Associative relationships, which link terms to similar terms (related terms) where the relationship between the terms is non-hierarchical.
  • Equivalence relationships, which link "preferred" terms to synonyms and quasi-synonyms which have not been selected for indexing purposes ("non-preferred terms").

The UNESCO Thesaurus database can be browsed in two ways:

  • Alphabetically
  • Hierarchically (by area of knowledge and by microthesaurus heading)
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Victorian Government

Victoria Online Thesaurus

Victoria Online Thesaurus - Version 1.0 - September 2005 - The Victoria Online (VO) Thesaurus is a subject thesaurus of descriptive terms that reflect the themes and resources within Victoria Online, the Victorian Government’s online portal. Victoria Online is a metadata-driven gateway to Victorian State, Federal and Local government information. The VO Thesaurus has been developed to populate the Keyword (DC.Subject) field within the VO Metadata Application Profile (VOMAP).

Thesauri Use within the Victorian Government

In May and June 2002 Multimedia Victoria (MMV) commissioned DSTC to investigate "Thesauri Use within the Victorian Government and the Evaluation of the Applicability of the "TAGS" Thesaurus"

The objectives were to:

  • Establish the scope and depth of thesauri use within Victorian Government and its agencies by conducting a survey of thesauri users;
  • Establish, in the context of the survey results, the usefulness of the "TAGS" thesaurus (a subject thesaurus) in realising MMV’s strategy of improving the discoverability and utilisation of online Victorian Government resources;
  • Establish other candidate subject thesauri for achieving these goals; and
  • Establish guiding principles for the authoring of the subject aspect of resource discovery metadata.

The thesauri use survey revealed that:

  • The predominant use of thesauri within Victorian Government is for authoring recordkeeping metadata;
  • Thesauri based on Keyword AAA and AGIFT are the most prominent thesauri used;
  • There is a low appreciation of the distinct and differing roles of recordkeeping metadata and resource discovery metadata; and
  • There are no thesauri directly in use for the authoring of resource discovery metadata.

DSTC has recommended, with caveats relating to early adoption issues, that MMV adopt TAGS as the high-level component of a Victoria Government wide Subject thesaurus.

In conclusion, DSTC has made six recommendations regarding authoring the subject aspect of resource discovery metadata. These can be summarised as follows:

  • That no attempt be made to use recordkeeping metadata for resource discovery;
  • That resource discovery metadata be limited to the succinct and effective description of its resource;
  • That metadata consistency be achieved through the application of a thesaurus;
  • That metadata not contain any information that can be derived from the thesaurus;
  • That non-controlled terms be allowed within metadata where necessary; and
  • That metadata content be audited and reviewed to locate non-controlled terms and feed them into a thesaurus update process; and
  • That MMV implement a thesaurus aware metadata driven search engine.

For more information about this report please contact Cheryl Hardy at Multimedia Victoria.

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VOCED Thesaurus

Search the VOCED Thesaurus of vocational training terms - "This is the new online version of the VOCED Thesaurus, used at National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to create index terms for the VOCED research database. We encourage use of the VOCED thesaurus terms for metadata in the field of vocational education and training research and policy...

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Last updated: 16 December 2005