1. U.S. Standard (NISO Z39.19)
2. British Standard (BS 8723 )
3. IFLA Guidelines
Marcia Lei Zeng, Kent State University
7 th NKOS Workshop, JCDL2005, Denver

NISO Z39.19-200x Guidelines for the
Construction, Format, and Management of
Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies
Some of the slides are based on
Emily Fayen 2004.6 SLA presentation &
Margie Hlava’s talk at 2005 DadaHarmony User Group meeting

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ANSI/NISO Z39.19, Guidelines for the Construction,
Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri –
1993
The most frequently requested NISO Standard
In spite of its age the Standard is still relevant
1999: NISO Workshop on Electronic Thesauri http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshop/thes99rpt.html
2002: NISO initiates revision of Z39.19
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Expand beyond thesaurus
Make more user-friendly
Explain important concepts
Explain principles of vocabulary control
Include electronic information environment
Include additional user search methods:
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Browse
Navigate
Keyword searching
Expand beyond A & I services
Include Web applications
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Vivian Bliss – Microsoft
Carol Brent – ProQuest
John Dickert – DTIC
Lynn El-Hoshy – Library of Congress
Marjorie Hlava – Access Innovations
Stephen Hearn – ALA
Sabine Kuhn – Chemical Abstracts Service
Pat Kuhr – H.W. Wilson Company
Diane McKerlie – DMA Consulting
Peter Morville -- Semantic Studios
Stuart Nelson – National Library of Medicine
Allan Savage – National Library of Medicine
Diane Vizine-Goetz – OCLC
Marcia Lei Zeng – Special Libraries Association
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Content
1 Introduction
2 Scope
3 Referenced Standards
4 Definitions, Abbreviations, and Acronyms
5 Controlled Vocabularies – Purpose, Concepts,
Principles, and Structure
6 Term Choice, Scope, and Form
7 Compound Terms
8 Relationships
9 Displaying Controlled Vocabularies
10 Interoperability
11 Construction, Testing, Maintenance, and
Management Systems
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Coverage documents
Types of vocabularies
Thesauri
Post-coordinated
Printed formats
Monolingual vocabularies
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Coverage
 Content objects
Types of vocabularies
 lists, synonym rings, taxonomy
Pre-coordinated
Web format
Multilingual vocabularies
(general)
Interoperability
Facet analysis
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• eliminating ambiguity
• controlling synonyms
• establishing relationships among terms where appropriate
• testing and validation of terms
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A list is a simple group of terms
Example:
Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
California
Colorado
. . . .
Frequently used in Web site pick lists and pull down menus
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Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum's implementation of The Museum System software by Gallery Systems

A synonym ring is a list of synonyms or near synonyms that are used interchangeably for retrieval purposes
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Synonym rings are usually found as sets of lists that allow users to access all content containing any of the terms.
-- Frequently used in systems where the content is not indexed or the indexing vocabulary is not controlled e.g., cholesterol:
Cholesterol
Blood Cholesterol
Serum Cholesterol
Good Cholesterol
Bad Cholesterol
LDL
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An example from International SEMATECH; a search for Silicon would look like this:
Your search was submitted as “SILICON” or “SI”
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Synonym rings are used to expand queries for content objects.
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If a user enters any one of these terms as a query to the system, all items are retrieved that contain any of the terms in the cluster.
Synonym rings are often used in systems where the underlying content objects are left in their unstructured natural language format,
 the control is achieved through the interface by drawing together similar terms into these clusters.
Synonym rings are used in conjunction with search engines and provide a minimal amount of control of the diversity of the language found in the texts of the underlying documents.
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A taxonomy is a set of preferred terms, all connected by a hierarchy or polyhierarchy
Example:
Chemistry
Organic chemistry
Polymer chemistry
Nylon
Frequently used in web navigation systems
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A thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary with multiple types of relationships
Example:
Rice
UF paddy
BT Cereals
BT Plant products
NT Brown rice
RT Rice straw
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Relationship types:
 Use/Used For – indicates preferred term
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Hierarchy – indicates broader and narrower terms
Associative – almost unlimited types of relationships may be used
It is the most complex format for controlled vocabularies and widely used.
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 One of the most important issues from the
1999 workshop
 Question: How to
 compare indexes
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 perform searches merge databases that have been developed using different controlled vocabularies?
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Factors Affecting Interoperability
Multilingual Controlled Vocabularies
Searching
Indexing
Merging Databases
Merging Controlled Vocabularies
Achieving Interoperability
Storage and Maintenance of Relationships among Terms in Multiple Controlled
Vocabularies
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 http://www.niso.org
 Ballot period: April 11, 2005 - May 25, 2005
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YES: 40
NO: 0
ABSTAIN: 4
(as of June 5, 2005)
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BS 8723: Structured Vocabularies for
Information Retrieval – Guide
Slides based on the presentation by
Stella G Dextre Clarke
Alan Gilchrist
Leonard Will
In ISKO 2004, London

 ISO 2788-1986 Guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri
= BS 5723:1987
 ISO 5964-1985 Guidelines for the establishment and development of multilingual thesauri
= BS 6723:1985
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 Printed versus electronic application
 Guidance on management software
 Interoperability:
 Mapping between thesauri and other types of vocabulary
 Formats/protocols for data exchange with downstream applications
 Applicability to end-user applications, not just those for information professionals
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BS 8723: Structured vocabularies for information retrieval – Guide
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Part 1 - Definitions, symbols and abbreviations
Part 2 – Thesauri
Part 3 - Vocabularies other than thesauri;
 Part 4 - Interoperability between vocabularies
 Part 5 - Interoperation between vocabularies and other components of information storage and retrieval systems
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 Classification schemes
 Subject heading lists
 Taxonomies
 Ontologies
 Semantic nets (?)
 Search thesauri
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How much guidance is needed on how to build other sorts of vocabulary?
Should we describe the idiosyncrasies of existing schemes, even where we judge there is a ‘better’ way?
To provide a basis for Part 4, Part 3 should pick out the characteristics of different vocabulary types that govern when and how you can map them. But some of the observable characteristics might not be what we’d recommend. What to do?
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Huge demand for accessing information that has been indexed with another language and/or vocabulary. The buzzword is ‘Mapping’. The
Semantic Web is just one application.
Part 4 to include multilingual thesauri as a special case of mapping between vocabularies.
Part 4 applies to situations in which more than one language or vocabulary is in use, but access to all resources is needed through the one vocabulary chosen by the user.
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BS 8723 part 4 has a wider scope than BS 6723, which was concerned only with multilingual thesauri.
It covers all of the previous ground and extends the scope to:
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 thesauri in different dialects of one language different thesauri in a single language situations where a thesaurus interoperates with one or more different types of structured vocabulary, such as classification schemes
 situations where not all the interoperating vocabularies have the same status and/or function.
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Vocabularies must work with
 Search engines
 Content Management Systems
 Web publishing software, etc.
Build on existing formats and protocols for data exchange
 e.g. Z39.50 and Zthes, XML schema?
DTD? MARC? SKOS Core Schema?
Topic Map? ADL gazetteer protocol?
Anything else?
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Parts 1 and 2 numbered 04/30086620 DC and 04/30094113 DC.
The documents may be ordered from BSI
Customer Services
 tel +44(0)208-996-9001 or
 email orders@bsi-global.com
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IFLA Classification and Indexing
Section
April 2005 released for comments

IFLA Classification and Indexing Section
WG on Guidelines for Multilingual Thesauri
 Chair: Gerhard J.A. Riesthuis (Netherlands)
 Members:
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Lois Mai Chan (USA),
Patrice Landry (Switzerland),
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Pia Leth (Sweden),
Ia McIlwaine (United Kingdom),
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Martin Kunz (Germany),
Dorothy McGarry (USA),
Max Naudi (France),
 Marcia Lei Zeng (USA)
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building a new thesaurus from the bottom up
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 starting with one language and adding another language or languages starting with more than one language simultaneously combining existing thesauri
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 merging two or more existing thesauri into one new
(multilingual) information retrieval language to be used in indexing and retrieval linking existing thesauri and subject heading languages to each other; using the existing thesauri and/or subject heading languages both in indexing and retrieval translating a thesaurus into one or more other languages
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Semantic problems pertain to equivalence relations between terms used as preferred and non-preferred terms in information retrieval languages.
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Equivalence relations exist not only within each separate language involved, but also between the languages (intra-language equivalence and interlanguage equivalence).
Intra-language homonymy and inter-language homonymy are also considered semantic questions.
Additional problems pertaining to semantics involve the scope, form and choice of thesaurus terms.
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Structural problems involve hierarchical and associative relations between the terms.
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An important question in this respect is whether the structure should be the same or different for each language.
In most if not all cases of linking, the structure will most probably not be the same in all the information retrieval languages involved.
In the other approaches mentioned it is possible in principle to apply the same structure to all languages.
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Building multilingual thesauri starting from scratch
Structure
Morphology and Semantics
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Starting from existing thesauri
Merging
Linking
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Glossary
Appendix:
An example of a non-symmetrical thesaurus
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English (British) cranes (birds) cranes (lifting equipment) water taps gas taps taps
NT water taps
NT gas taps
English (USA) cranes (birds) cranes (lifting equipment) water faucets gas faucets faucets
NT water faucets
NT gas faucets
Dutch kraanvogels hijskranen
SN voor andere typen kranen, zie aldaar waterkranen gaskranen kranen
SN voor kranen als hijswerktuig gebruik hijskranen
NT waterkranen
NT gaskranen
French grue (oiseau) grue (appareil de levage) robinet à eau robinet à gaz robinet
NT robinet à eau
NT robinet à gaz
Cranes is a homograph in English does not necessarily mean that equivalent terms in other languages are also homographs. The Dutch term kranen is a homograph too,
39 but with the meanings cranes (lifting equipment) and taps.

Invitation to: World-Wide Review of
IFLA Guidelines for Multilingual Thesauri
 Comments due by July 31, 2005
 URL: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s29/wgmt-invitation.htm
 Contact me at: mzeng@kent.edu
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