What is a thesaurus anyway? Why is it important to business?
It's All About Effective Search
Definition
A thesaurus is a collection of terms that represent important concepts to the business or organization. Since the terms on the list are chosen carefully to be used for an extended period, the collection is called a controlled vocabulary. Typically, several of these terms are associated with each document (or other electronic item such as an image or podcast) in a business's collection. When a user searches for all the items that have to do with a concept or combination of concepts described by these terms, the search engine can easily find them all. This is considerably different from the collection of synonyms and antonyms, often in book form, first popularized by Roget's Thesaurus.
Thesaurus construction guidelines are published by national and international standards organizations. The definition of thesaurus from the NISO Z39.19 standard is:
A controlled vocabulary arranged in a known order and structured so that the various relationships among terms are displayed clearly and identified by standardized relationship indicators. Relationship indicators should be employed reciprocally.
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Example
For a professional organization of dentists, those concepts might be organized into the main areas of Professional Education, Membership Services, Organizational Structure, Publications, and Events. Each of the main areas would have a number of subsections which would in turn have subsections as the concepts represented become more specific. So the Pediatric Dentristy Update would fall under Seminars under Continuing Education under the Professional Education main area. It might also logically fall under Half-day workshops under Annual Meeting under the Events main area.
Hierarchical Structure
The tree-like structure, also known as a hierarchy, is the way that terms are arranged in a thesaurus so that users can understand, by position, what concept the term represents. In a different thesaurus, the term 'Seminars' could represent a presentation by an Investment Broker to potential investors but since it is a subtopic of Professional Education in the Dental Association list of terms, we understand it to mean a dental education meeting.
Equivalent meanings
Thesauri (the plural of thesaurus) store other information about each term in the collection. Perhaps most important when indexing items are the Non-Preferred terms - synonyms and near-synonyms - that may be used instead of the term chosen by the thesaurus creator. Seminar might also be described as a workshop or a class. Being able to reference other words with equivalent meanings makes it easier to find all the items that discuss the concept, not just the ones that use the specific word 'seminar'.
Related terms
Terms in a thesaurus often are related to other terms that aren't nearby in the hierarchy. So, the thesaurus provides a way to record related terms. In this example, more than half of the Association's Annual Meeting is dedicated to professional education which makes Annual Meeting and Continuing Education related. Each should reference the other. Related terms are often displayed on web pages that use the thesaurus as a navigational tool for the site's content to help users discover other avenues for their search.
Benefits
- Identifying the concepts represented in a knowledge collection assists an organization in identifying and defining its knowledge assets. It may even find that these assets can be income-producing.
- The thesaurus represents the range and depth of the electronic collection. As items are added or sections enhanced, terms are added to the thesaurus for the new or more specific concepts added.
- The thesaurus can be used as a navigation tool allowing users to "drill down" to the concept on which they wish to search. They'll learn more about the subjects included as well.
- Enabling users - employees, stakeholders, website visitors - to effectively identify items that are useful to them. And the more effective the search, the less frustrated (and more productive) the user!
Resources
- Information Science Glossary- NISO Thesaurus Standard
- The White Paper section of this website