Controlled Vocabularies


Controlled Vocabularies
	Bibliography
	Classification Schemes
	Databases of thesauri
	Software
	Thesaurus Building
	Thesaurus Lists
	Thesaurus Sites
	Word Finders

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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 Sites

	AGIFT (Australian Governments' Interactive Functions Thesaurus) This is supported by the National Archives of Australia and describes business functions carried out across Commonwealth, State and local governments in Australia. It contains 25 high-level functions, each with second and third level terms, as well as non-preferred terms and related terms. Terms can be entered as metadata for the function element of the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS).
	AGRIFOREST English language interface to Thesaurus of the Viikki Science Library at the University of Helsinki.
	AGROVOC FAO online vocabulary search facility: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese.
	AIATSIS thesauri These contain headings for language groups, place names and subjects relating to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies. The headings are used to describe all items held in Mura®, the AIATSIS Collections Catalogue.
	Alzheimer's Disease Thesaurus
	AOD: The Alcohol and Other Drug Thesaurus A guide to concepts and terminology in substance abuse and addiction from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
	AOHST: Australian Occupational Health and Safety Thesaurus Produced by Australia's National Occupational Health and Safety Commission and available as separate PDF files comprising a hierarchical structure of preferred terms and an alphabetical list of preferred terms and non-preferred terms.
	APAIS Thesaurus A list of subject terms used by the National Library of Australia for the Australian Public Affairs information Service.
	APT: Australian Pictorial Thesaurus Created from the State Library of New South Wales PICMAN topic thesaurus, and hosted at SLNSW using ADLIB Information Systems software.
	Art and Architecture Thesaurus Getty Vocabulary Program Art and Architecture Thesaurus at The Getty. In print as Art and Architecture Thesaurus, 1994, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, NY. Library of Congress, Cataloging Distribution Service.
	ASFA Thesaurus: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts Also available as Thesaurus Builder.
	Asian vegetables 'Access to Asian vegetables' thesaurus of Victoria's State Department of Primary Industries.
	ASIS Thesaurus American Society of Information Science Thesaurus of Information Science. 2nd ed. by Jessica Milstead.
	Astronomy Thesaurus Compiled by R.M. & R.R. Shobbrook , provides multilingual access: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
	Australia-Japan research project The AJRP, a joint enterprise between the Australian War Memorial and the Japanese Embassy in Canberra includes controlled vocabularies for area, keyword and unit name.
	Australian Emergency Management Terms Thesaurus This is Manual 4 (Compiled by staff of the Emergency Management Information Centre, 1998, ISBN 0 642 58810 4) in the Australian Emergency Manual Series.
	Australian Thesaurus of Educational Descriptors, 3rd ed. ATED is managed by the Cunningham Library of the Australian Council for Educational Research and is used to index the Australian Education Index and the Education Research Theses databases, as well as the ACER library catalogue.
	Australian Transport Index Thesaurus Devised by the staff of the MG Lay Library at ARRB Transport Research and available as pdf file.
	Australian Women's Weekly Subject Thesaurus Compiled by B Baird and revised by K Borrett in 1998, as part of the Australian Women's Weekly 1946-71 Index: a collaborative research project in the Women's Studies Department at Flinders University. It may be consulted when searching the index.
	Biocomplexity thesaurus Developed through a partnership between the NBII (the U.S. National Biological Information Infrastructure) and CSA, as a merger of the CSA's Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Thesaurus, Life Sciences Thesaurus, Pollution Thesaurus, and Sociological Thesaurus, with the CERES/NBII Thesaurus.
	Bioethics Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check] This is a concordance with MeSH from the thesaurus that supports the BIOETHICSLINE database at U.S. National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature at Georgetown University.
	British Museum Materials Thesaurus Archeological Objects Thesaurus Records object names in the British Museum, using standard thesaurus relationships, as well as explanatory notes; architecture based on ISO 2788.
	Kevin Taylor's Ka-Boom listing of comic book words (Offline - available in hardcopy for purchase)
	CA Lexicon This supplants the CAS General Subject Vocabulary Helper* of Chemical Abstracts Service and is available to subscribers of STN.*
	CAB Thesaurus
	CALL at the US Center of Army Lessons Learned Contains military terminology - there is provision for direct searching of the thesaurus terms on the Web by request to the AltaVista facility.
	Canadian Literacy Thesaurus = Thésaurus canadien d'alphabétisation Maintained by the Canadian Literacy Thesaurus Coalition; funded by the National Literacy Secretariat of Human Resources Development Canada.
	Canadian Subject Headings CSH is a list of standard subject headings (in English) on Canadian topics, which complements and is compatible with Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The records are a cumulation of about 6000 headings, including those in Canadian Subject Headings, Third Edition (CSH3), 1992, and its supplements.
	Canadian Thesaurus of Construction Science and Technology TC/CS was prepared by the IF Research Group, University of Montreal for the Government of Canada, Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce (now called Industry Canada).
	CATIE (Community AIDS Treatment Information Exchange) Entry point for terms in thesaurus used by Community AIDS Treatment Information Exchange, Canada.
	CERES/NBII thematic thesaurus The Californian Environmental Resources Evaluation System and National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Biological Resources Division (BRD) are collaborating on the development of an Integrated Environmental Thesaurus and Thesaurus Networking Tool Set for metadata development and keyword searching to facilitate access to a variety of electronic data describing California's environments.
	Cook's Thesaurus Lori Alden's cooking encyclopedia that covers ingredients and kitchen tools. Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions.
	CRTC Thesaurus = Thésaurus CRTC Used by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission = Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes for keywords and phrases used to index Decisions, Notices and Orders.
	Curtin Keyword Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check] Developed primarily for central administrative records at Curtin University of Technology ; it is derived from the Keyword AAA Thesaurus.
	DEH (Department of the Environment and Heritage) thesaurus Produced by the Australian Department of Environment and Heritage, developed from a subset of the Thesaurus of Environmental Protection Terms, of the WA Dept. of Environmental Protection, 1995.
	DFD Thesaurus Developed by the 'German Remote Sensing Data Centre (Deutsches Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum) for their 'Intelligent Satellite Data Information System ISIS' in accordance with ISO 2788. Its structure has been enriched by a number of elements in order to facilitate its usage in a dedicated query interface.
	DTIC Thesaurus The thesaurus is used in association with the US Department of Defense Technical Information Center's scientific and technical documents collections, and may be searched by selecting it as a database from the STINET site.
	ÉDUthès (French language) Education thesaurus of the Centre de Documentation Collégiale (CDC), Quebec, Canada.
	EET (European Education Thesaurus) Joint product of the European Commission and the Council of Europe; for download from EURYDICE, the education information network in Europe.
	eHealth Thesaurus (French language) Maintained in Canada by the Office of Health and the Information Highway (OHIH) to index material on health care and health information, telecommunications technology, including health technologies, the Internet and computers, and branches of telehealth services.
	ELDIS [offline at Dec 2006 check] This is based upon the English version of the UN Macrothesaurus, 3rd ed., and used by the ELDIS gateway hosted at Institute for Development Studies, Sussex.
	Envoc thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check] The thesaurus for INFOTERRA databases. (INFOTERRA: formerly the International Referral System of the United Nations Environment Programme, is the Global Environmental Information Exchange Network, established in 1975 by UNEP to "facilitate the exchange of environmental information within and among nations".
	ERIC Thesaurus WAIT FOR INFO FROM MIKE ABOUT THIS ITEM
	Eurodicautom The European Commission's multilingual term bank, developed since 1973. The four original languages were Dutch, French, German and Italian, to which Danish and English were added in 1973, Greek in 1981, Portuguese and Spanish in 1986, and Finnish and Swedish in 1995. Latin is also present. It covers a broad spectrum of human knowledge, with emphasis in technical and specialised terminology (agriculture, telecommunications, transport, legislation, finance) related to EU policy.
	Eurovoc A multilingual, polythematic thesaurus focusing on the laws and legislation of the European Union (EU). It may be used in the areas of law, legislation and politics. Eurovoc exists in 11 official EU languages ( Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish). There are also versions in the languages of some non-membership countries including Czech Republic.
	Fachgebärdenlexikon Psychologie (German Language) Universität Hamburg lexicon of signs used in the field of psychology with terminology in German and English.
	Family Thesaurus Online Australian Institute of Family Studies has produced this since 1984 to index the literature in the Australian Family & Society Abstracts database; it charts changes in terminology in the interdisciplinary field of family studies, which draws on a number of social science disciplines, including sociology, psychology, demography, education, family law, and history.
	Feature type thesaurus for Alexandria Digital Library Terminology to categorize named locations. It is designed for use with the ADL gazetteer.
	FAIF Subject headings for the International Index of Film Periodicals, with separate listings for corporate bodies and personal names.
	Florida Environments Online Thesaurus
	GEM controlled vocabularies
	GEMET Thesaurus From the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET).
	Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) Thesaurus Maintained by the US Library of Congress in association with database of national laws from about 35 countries.
	Gnomon thesauri Set of faceted German thesauri for classical studies databases. German language.
	Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus = Thésaurus des sujets de base du Gouvernement du Canada The GoC Core Subject Thesaurus Web site has been developed to help federal departments and agencies implement federal standards documented in the Treasury Board Common Look and Feel (CLF) Standards, one of which requires GoC web sites to adopt the five metatags (Title, Originator, Language of Resource, Date and Controlled Subject) for description of Web sites and other electronic resources. The Thesaurus assists with the controlled subject vocabulary.
	HASSETHumanities And Social Sciences Electronic Thesaurus at University of Essex Based upon Unesco Thesaurus, comp. J. Aitchison, Unesco, Paris, 1977 ISBN 92-3-101469-2. < ahref="http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/">Intute: Social Sciences (formerly SOSIG) implementation.
	Health and Ageing Thesaurus Seventh ed., 2005, by Australian Department of Health and Ageing using MeSH as a basis for medical terms and creating their own in non-medical areas; First ed. was HHCS Thesaurus; it then became Human Services Thesaurus, then Health and Aged Care Thesaurus, before adopting current title for 7th ed.
	Health Thesaurus Controlled term entry point for HealthInsite.
	HUMORD Norwegian subject headings.
	IEEE Web Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check]
	INFODATA [offline at Dec 2006 check] Information science, in German and English; Fachhochschule Potsdam.
	Infoterm Prepared by Tor Henriksen and Bjørn Lindh ISO/TC 46/SC3 N526 (revision 961024): Analysis, representation, storage, search and retrieval.
	INSPEC Availability information from IEE; covers computing and control, electronics, physics.
	IPSV The vocabulary developed in the UK for populating the Subject element of the e-Government Metadata Standard (e- GMS) for use with all the electronic resources produced in the UK public sector. It is fully compliant with ISO 2788 and BS 8723. Internal vocabulary viewer Abridged version viewer
	IRIS (Illinois Researcher Information Service) Thesaurus Illinois Researcher Information Service at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign includes links to: Various documentation guides for the IRIS database on funding sources Hypertext Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check]
	ITRT International Thesaurus of Refugee Terminology in English, French and Spanish for refugee- and forced migration-related information (in print since 1988, online from 2003).
	Kevin Taylor's Ka-Boom listing of comic book words (Offline - available in hardcopy for purchase)
	Keyword AAA: Thesaurus of general terms State Records NSW released this thesaurus in 1995; a second edition appeared in 1998. It is supported and explained by the National Archives of Australia, endorsed as being compliant with the Australian Standard for Records Management (AS 4390). It covers terminology common to business functions and activities in most organizations. It should be used in conjunction with a thesaurus of functional terms, relating to the organization's specific or core business functions.
	LACBD subject thesaurus Used with the Los Angeles Comprehensive Bibliographic Database that University of Southern California has produced derived from the two bibliographies: Los Angeles and its Environs in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography of a Metropolis, Ward Ritchie Press, 1973; and Los Angeles and its Environs in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography of a Metropolis: 1970-1990, Los Angeles City Historical Society, 1996, using MultiTes.
	LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) Classification Web (password required) LCSH via Library of Congress Catalogs, using subject browse or advanced search facilities. Weekly lists. Maintained by L.C. Cataloging Policy and Support Office; these lists remain on the Web until incorporated into the Annual edition.
	Life Sciences Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check] Previously freely interactive via Cambridge Scientific Abstracts* Internet database service.*
	LIRN Library Information enquiry and Referral Network with European Business Schools Librarians Group Thesaurus.[taken offline 2001]
	LIV (Legislative Indexing Vocabulary) Introduction and Manual. Maintained for the THOMAS Bill Summary & Status files and the Library of Congress Information System (LOCIS) Federal Legislation files by the US Library of Congress Congressional Research Service.
	MDA In-house initiatives in the UK; supports thesauri including: Archaeological Objects Thesaurus. British Museum Materials Thesaurus. British Museum Object Names. Railways Object Name (offline). Waterways Object Name Thesaurus. Produced from a partnership between MDA, the curatorial staff of The Waterways Trust and colleagues from the Inland Waterways Heritage Network.
	Merriam-Webster Thesaurus
	MeSH: Medical Subject Headings maintained by the US National Library of Medicine. This site has an Introduction to MeSH as well as provision for downloading of the Medical Subject Headings; Mesh is a component of the Unified Medical Language System®
	MSW: Mammal Species of the World. U.S. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution listing of mammal species compiled under the auspices of the American Society of Mammalogists, based upon D. E. Wilson, & D. M. Reeder (eds) (1993). Mammal Species of the World. Smithsonian Institution Press.
	Multilingual Egyptological Thesaurus = Thésaurus Multilingue de l'Égyptologie = Mehrsprachiger ägyptologischer Thesaurus Edited by Dirk van der Plas with the collaboration of The Committee Multilingual Egyptological Thesaurus and ICOM Comité International Pour l'Égyptologie (CIPÉG) IAE Computer Working Group, Utrecht - Paris.
	NAIC Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check] The U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services Thesaurus of child abuse, child welfare, and adoption terms for Clearinghouse Document records of the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse.
	NASA Thesaurus References to print and electronic (including browsable PDF) versions of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration thesaurus.
	National Monuments Record Thesauri The lead body of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and English Heritage supports these thesauri: MDA Archeological Objects Thesaurus Building Materials Components Defence of Britain Evidence Thesaurus Historic Aircraft Type Maritime Cargo Maritime Craft Type Maritime Place Names Monument Types Thred (archive type and format)
	National Public Health Language (NPHL) Thesaurus Used to support HealthPromis, the bibliographic public health database of the Health Development Agency (UK).
	NCBI Taxonomy Browser U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information taxonomy home page.
	NIZW Thesaurus Zorg en Welzijn Nederlands Instituut voor Zoorg en Welzijn, the Netherlands Institute for Care and Welfare thesaurus using MultiTes.
	Occupations Thesaurus Maintained at National Library of Australia; recommended for contributions to the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts* (RAAM).*
	OECD Macrothesaurus English, French, German and Spanish equivalents.
	POLEX+® A police lexicon officially known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police English-French Police Terminological Glossary = Lexique terminologique policier français-anglais de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada.
	Population Multilingual Thesaurus CICRED (Comite International de Cooperation dans les Recherches Nationales en Demographie = Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography) merged the word lists of Population multilingual thesaurus, Popline thesaurus and Multilingual demographic dictionary according to the recommendations of the group working on the updating of the Thesaurus which met in Paris in November 1995. In English, Spanish, or French.
	Proquest Controlled vocabulary of subject terms [offline at Dec 2006 check] UMI uses controlled subject terms for precise searching of subject fields in ProQuest® databases such as ABI/INFORM®, Banking Information Source, Business Dateline®, Business Periodicals, BusinessLINK®, General Periodicals, Newspaper Abstracts, Periodical Abstracts, and Resource/One. The vocabulary may be browsed online or downloaded.
	Roget's Thesaurus At Thesaurus.com Roget II and Roget International at Bartleby.com Word imperfect/Simon Winchester Atlantic Monthly, May 2001 (History of the development of the Roget, and evaluation in contemporary context). SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
	RVM Répertoire de vedettes-matière maintained at the Bibliothèque de l'Université Laval provides subscription access to about 200,000 French subject headings and their English equivalents, as well as some 30 lists of subdivisions applicable to these headings. It is a partial adaptation of CSH and LCSH.
	SA Community Services Thesaurus The South Australian Community Services Thesaurus my be consulted indirectly by linking to CISA Infosearch, selecting A-Z Services, then selecting a term alphabetically. Once a term is selected, its hierarchical arrangement is also displayed.
	ScOT Schools Online Thesaurus is a product of The Le@rning Federation project, an initiative of State and Federal governments of Australia and the New Zealand government to create online interactive curriculum content, or 'learning objects', specifically for ANZ schools. ScOT is used to describe content in a way consistent with school education curriculum documents.
	Seattle City Clerk Thesaurus
	Southwest Thesaurus University of Arizona Learning Technologies Center maintains this vocabulary describing the southwestern region of the USA.
	SPIN [offline at Dec 2006 check] InfoEd International research funding vocabulary.
	Spindrift Music Thesaurus
	Statistics Canada Thesaurus = Thésaurus de Statistique Canada Bilingual subject access to the Statistics Canada Online Catalogue* and to BiblioCat, the Statistics Canada Library and Information Centre's online library catalogue.*
	Svenska ämnesord Swedish subject headings and SAB codes.
	TAGS - Thesaurus of Australian Government Subjects Subject terms for use by Australian Government agencies which: covers, at a high level, subject concepts representing the scope of Australian Government activities; provides a potential source of terminology for portal browse lists; and provides a subject vocabulary which is broader than the detailed vocabularies already adopted by some agencies, but which is able to function as an introduction to those detailed vocabularies, or to serve as a controlled vocabulary for those agencies without a specialised one.
	TED Thesaurus on Emergencies and Disasters, primarily in English and German, and based on the Australian Emergency Management Terms Thesaurus. It integrates the terminology of UDK-Thesaurus and GEMET; available following registration at the MEDIS (Mercure Environmental Distaster Information System) portal.
	Terms of environment United States Environmental Protection Agency environmental term definitions.
	Tesauro de Patrimonio Histórico Andaluz Spanish language site.
	Thesaurus in engineering (in Farsi) from IRANDOC: Iranian Information and Documentation Centre using Thesaurus Builder.
	Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM) TGM1: Subject Terms. TGMII: Genre & Physical Characteristics Terms. In print as Thesaurus for Graphic Materials. TGM I: Subject Terms. TGM II: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms, compiled and edited by Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, US Library of Congress, Cataloging Distribution Service, Washington, D.C., 1995, ISBN 0-8444-0889-1.
	Thesaurus for the herb [offline at Dec 2006 check]
	Thesaurus of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Online version of the Thesaurus created by S.A. Hansen for the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International (HURIDOCS).
	Thesaurus of Occupational Therapy Subject Headings Co-sponsored by the American Occupational Therapy Foundation and the American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc., May 2000; this thesaurus is a reference guide for use with OT Search, an online bibliographic database which indexes the holdings of the Wilma L. West Library. It is based on MeSH.
	Thesaurus of Sociological Indexing Terms [offline at Dec 2006 check]
	Thesaurus Technik und Management Fachinformation Technik thesaurus of technical terms in German.
	Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus (was Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus) By clicking on words, you follow a thread of meaning, creating a spatial map of linguistic associations. The Visual Thesaurus was built using Thinkmap™, a data-animation technology developed by Plumb Design.
	Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT) (formerly ITS thesaurus)
	UDK Online Thesaurus [offline at Dec 2006 check] Thesaurus of the German/Austrian Umweltdatenkatalog (Environmental Meta Data Catalogue), in German or English.
	UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT) A project to create a subject thesaurus for the UK archive sector, being built from terms contributed by individual archives, archive projects and users.
	UNESCO Thesaurus Site enables browsing of United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation Thesaurus and provides purchasing information.
	United States. National Agricultural Library NAL Agricultural Thesaurus NAL Animal Use Alternatives Thesaurus
	University of Adelaide Records Management Keyword Thesaurus Functional thesaurus listing from TRIM software; based upon Keyword AAA
	USAID Thesaurus
	USGS Gateway to the Earth Project
	VESA VESA - Verkkosanasto; general subject headings in Finnish.
	Victorian local history thesaurus Subject terms used in Royal Historical Society of Victoria cataloguing projects.
	Vocabulary of Basic Terms for Cataloguing Costume In English, German and French by ICOM: International Committee for the Museums and Collections of Costume; it includes garments and accessories, and terms are accompanied by pictorial representations.
	VOCED Used at NCVER to create index terms for the VOCED research database in the field of vocational education and training research and policy.
	WebLaw Thesaurus The Legal Information Access Centre (LIAC) of the State Library of NSW has a two level list of subject headings with particular emphasis on plain English legal information. It is used by the New South Wales Attorney-General's Lawzone project. The WebLaw project has adopted and is modifying this thesaurus.
	WEDT Wordsmyth Educational Dictionary Thesaurus American english dictionary with integrated thesaurus.
	World Bank Thesaurus

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