School of Information Management & Systems. Spring 2001.
245 Organization of Information in Collections.   Michael Buckland.

Assignment 11: Make a Small Thesaurus.
11A: Topic, assumptions, and sample of terms due March 19.
11B: Thesaurus due April 4.

A thesaurus generally has single terms (or phrases) suitable for a searcher to combine in Boolean searches (aka "post-coordinate indexing"). Create a small thesaurus for vocabulary control for one or more attributes in the database you are making.

1. Read Morville, Peter. Building a Synonymous Search Index and his How Do You Build a Thesaurus?. (Following the links from the latter is optional. Two don't work.)

2. Make explicit assumptions about:
2.1. The collection;
2.2. The situation in which it is to be used;
2.3. The purpose of its use; and
2.4. The user group to be served.

3. Use the following two formats as applicable:

Preferred Term:   HAIR
Scope Note [Definition, explanation, scope -- unless obvious]: Includes fur of animals
Use For: TRESSES
Broader Term: HEAD
Narrower Term: EYELASHES
Related Terms: SCALP, WIG
(To reduce effort, use italics for terms for which you are not establishing entries.)

Non-preferred term:   TRESSES Use: HAIR

4. Scale: Minimum of 15 Preferred Terms.

5. Deliverables:
-- List of assumptions;
-- Sources used: Where did your terms come from?
-- Alphabetical list;
-- Hierarchical listing with decimal notation. (See Taylor p 157).
-- Diagram of relationships between terms, either Tree Structure(s) or Arrowgraph(s).

Notes: Think in terms of attributes of the items in your collection. Only in a very simple case does a thesaurus form a single hierarchy. Analysis in terms of facets, each likely to form a separate hierarchy, commonly helps.
In any thesaurus expected to last, one should have a History Note for each term indicating when it came into use, its soiurce, and when it was retired.
The School does not yet support any specialized thesaurus construction software and it is not needed at this small scale. However, anyone wishing to download and use thesaurus software at their own responsibility on to their own machines could consider "TheW32," available at as freeware from http://publish.uwo.ca/~craven/freeware.htm