Controlled Vocabularies

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These pages provide links to examples of thesauri and to classification schemes that may be used for controlling database or WWW site subject content. They also provide links to descriptive and critical material about such metainformation. Please navigate through them using the menu at the left.

Thesaurus Building & Use - Guidance

	Aitchison, J., Gilchrist, A. & Bawden, D. (2000). Thesaurus construction and use: a practical manual (4th ed.). Chicago, IL, USA: Fitzroy Dearborn.
	American Society of Indexers Thesaurus Information.
	Craven, T. Introductory tutorial on thesaurus construction. London, Ontario, Canada: University of Western Ontario, Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Step by step guidance on constructing a thesaurus, including collecting terms, deciding on the forms of terms, and choosing the appropriate relationships with which to link terms.
	Hoy, M.(1998). Understanding government terminology: natural language searching and government thesauri.. Canberra: National Archives of Australia. This contains a summary of the historical context of the development of functions from an archival perspective, focusing primarily on case studies, in the Archives Authority of New South Wales and the National Archives of Australia. Broad er level on-line initiatives in Australia are then examined, followed by a discussion of natural language and how such queries could be translated to relevant terms in the broad level government function-based thesaurus for text or metadata searching.A model is proposed for a natural language thesaurus and a function-based thesaurus called the Australian Governments’ Interactive Functions Thesaurus (AGIFT). The thesaurus is intended to cover the functions of Commonwealth, State, Territory and local government. The workings of the model are described at a conceptual level and methodologies for development of the content are explored.
	International Organization for Standardization ISO 2788:1986 Documentation -- Guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri ISO 5964:1985 Documentation -- Guidelines for the establishment and development of multilingual thesauri
	Montague Institute. The Institute provides tools, techniques, and training for information professionals who are working with corporate knowledge publication; the site includes articles that deal with organizing information, taxonomies and taxonomy models.
	Morville, P. (1998). Building a synonymous search index. Webreview
	NISO/ASI/ALCTS Workshop on Electronic Thesauri: planning for a standard, November 1999, Washington DC, USA. Includes report on workshop and bibliography of background readings.
	National Information Standards Organization (U.S.)(2005). Guidelines for the construction, format, and management of monolingual controlled vocabularies. Bethesda, MD, USA (ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 (ISSN 1041-5653, ISBN: 1-880124-65-3). Presents guidelines and conventions for the contents, display, construction, testing, maintenance, and management of monolingual controlled vocabularies. It focuses on controlled vocabularies that are used for the representation of content objects in knowledge organization systems including lists, synonym rings, taxonomies, and thesauri. Developing the next generation of standards for controlled vocabularies and thesauri: initiative commenced in 2003 to revise the current standard.
	State Records New South Wales (2000). Compiling a functional thesaurus to merge with Keyword AAA. [offline at Dec 2006 check]
	The bibliography on this website also contains a number of documents dealing with creation and use.