Thesaurus speed dating
conclusions
The ideal thesaurus…
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…is tailor-made for the special needs of its
user community.
In other words, it is different from every
other thesaurus.
Making it different helps with:
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adapting the tool to its intended application
popularity with users
the bottom line (financially)
Note the tension between conforming to an
ideal norm, and differentiation to suit users
But the “user community” is
changing
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Google-eyed
Heightened expectations
Amorphous, expanding, scattered, global,
interconnected, unpredictable
Thesauri partnered with ontologies have the
power to unlock barriers and drive new
inferencing applications.
Potentially, the Semantic Web is the user
community, for any online thesaurus ported
using SKOS.
An effective Semantic Web
poses demands on thesauri:
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Rigorous hierarchies
Reliable mappings
Forethought about moving thesaurus
extracts to other contexts
What else? Let’s reconsider the ideal
thesaurus…
Specificity
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Thesaurus responds to its context – the
application(s); political environment;
organizational; financial.
But should put the interests of its users
above those of its producers
Budgets are shrinking. Cooperation
between thesaurus producers?
Ease of use
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Looks like Google?
Involves the users. Puts the user first.
The ideal thesaurus is invisible to users
And the name “thesaurus” is not used in
public
Integrated with browsing, searching and
indexing
Search expansion based on relationships
between terms and concepts
Updating
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Maintaining access to obsolescent
terms/concepts?
Relationships as well as terms updated
Frequent updating creates problems as well
as benefits. Interim updates?
The whole maintenance job is too timeconsuming
Problems arise when software is
changed/abandoned
Multilinguism
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Ability to cope with diverse languages and
scripts
Very demanding. Needs experts in the
language/ and in the domain and context of
use/ and in the idea of a thesaurus
Copes with cultural as well as linguistic
differences, leading to non-symmetrical
structures
Interoperability/Semantic Web
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Copyright permissions/licences
Use compatible software
Linkage with terminology work
Cooperation, leading to fewer different thesauri and
fewer different information repositories
Need an “architecture” for integrating specialized
vocabularies under a generalized umbrella
Publish in SKOS for Linked Data applications
Vision of a worldwide semantic pool, with everything
interlinked
Inter-vocabulary mapping essential. But it’s not easy!
The ideal thesaurus…
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Is sustainable – financially and
politically
…is the realization of where your
thoughts take you, having participated
in the discussions today.
Make the most of it!