School of Information Management & Systems. Spring 2003.
245 Organization of Information in Collections.   Michael Buckland.

Assignment 11: Make a Small Thesaurus. Revised wording, March 19, in italics.
11A: Sample: Assumptions and sample due March 17. 11B: Thesaurus due March 31.

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. This could be for one or more attributes in the database you are making but does not have to be.

1. Read Morville, Peter. Building a Synonymous Search Index and his How Do You Build a Thesaurus?. (Following the links is optional. One of them, a link to examples is meant to lead to the American Society for Indexers "Thesauri online site" which is now at http://www.asindexing.org/site/thesonet.shtml visited in Assig. 7.)

2. Make explicit assumptions about:
2.1. The scope and purpose; 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:
Entry for Preferred Terms: e.g.
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 BT, NT, and RT terms for which you are not establishing entries.)

Entry for Non-preferred Terms: e.g.
TRESSES Use HAIR

4. Deliverables:
11A: Draft Sample: List of assumptions, examples of likely terms, sample Preferred Term entry with SN, BT, NT, etc.
11B: Thesaurus (Minimum of 15 Preferred Terms):
-- List of assumptions;
-- Sources used: Where did your terms come from?
-- Alphabetical list of Preferred Terms and Non-preferred Terms, with their relationships as in #3;
-- Hierarchical listing of Preferred Terms (only) with decimal notation. (See Taylor p 157).
-- Diagram of relationships between Preferred Terms, either Tree Structure(s) or Arrowgraph(s).

Notes: Consider making a thesaurus for an attribute of the items in your Assignment 10 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 source, 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