The Thesaurus: Review Renaissance and Revision

Citation

Roe, S.K. and Thomas, A.R. (2005), "The Thesaurus: Review Renaissance and Revision", New Library World, Vol. 106 No. 11/12, pp. 562-563. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800510635053

This compilation of 11 themed papers is sandwiched between a brief introduction and a helpful index and as it title suggest is focused on the thesaurus. I think it is important to state at the outset that this is an American publication and reflects the American understanding of the concept of thesaurus and is a tad more liberal than the European understanding. This difference initially caused the reviewer some difficulties.

The opening paper is a gentle review by Jean Aitchison (a veritable thesaural diva) and Stella Dexter Clarke (The thesaurus: a historical viewpoint, with a look to the future). Jean was too modest in the writing, more time on her valuable contribution to the development of this powerful subject access tool would have been a perfectly acceptable extension of this well produced contribution.

The two papers that follow (Alan R. Thomas Teach yourself thesaurus: exercises, readings and resources and James R. Shearer A practical exercise in building a thesaurus) have a little too much of the “text book” about them and sit uncomfortably in a serial. They are both “to the purpose”, given the title, however, they are too text book and not appropriate in this context.

Nielsen's paper (Thesaurus construction: key issues and selected readings) is broken into a series of topics (Concept of thesaurus, General writings  … , Approaches to thesaurus construction, Collection of terms and concepts, etc.) there are a couple of paragraphs on the nature of the topic and then a list of potential readings. This is not what I am used to in terms of literature reviews. Having been brought up on the Journal of Documentation approach I expect closer guidance as to what is vital and what peripheral in terms of the selection of readings. This weakens the utility of this contribution.

Leonard Will (a very useful thesaural name and matching website) provides a very useful paper on thesaurus consultancy – clearly a man talking about that which he knows well. His presentation is business like and practical and hedges more towards the text – book than the serial. Even with that caveat a very useful contribution, giving the alternative approach to doing it in house.

Leslie Ann Owens and Pauline Atherton Cochrane's paper on thesaurus evaluation was more acceptably a journal article as it reported on research, however, the extended opening review added little to that which followed and the content proved narrower than the title intimated.

Johnson's contribution (Distributed thesaurus web services) took us on a jargon rich journey through the dense undergrowth of HTML and related areas exploring the possibilities of linking multiple thesauri as access tools. The technological possibilities are exciting, however, I fear that the awareness of potential unhelpful outcomes was lost in the “bling” of the computing. As you progressively link distributed thesauri and increase the variety of terminology available to describe a specific concept, this may increase the volume of material retrieved, however, it will have detrimental effect on the precision in information recall. It is in the base data that the quality improvement needs to occur to avoid this trap.

Landry's article (Multilingual subject access: the linking approach of MACS) reviews recent European projects in this area. This is a very useful example of the problems of cross border/cross language working. However, we are not strictly talking “thesaurus” as most of the participants are using LCSH or translations of LCSH, which as a subject heading system, is very different from a true thesaurus.

The volume closes with a transcript of an interview (June 2003) with Amy J. Warner, who is the project leader for the NISO Thesaurus Development Team. This is an interesting question and answer session that focuses more on the process of standard creation than the specific topic standards for thesaurus construction.

This is the third monographic “separate” I have reviewed recently, and I have been a bit “grumpy” about the format. With this example another problem comes up. Much of the material covered in this volume is more text – book in nature than journal article. If this item was published as a series of contributions to a monograph under editorship I would not be bothered, as the majority of the material is suited for that form of presentation. In this case the serial content has been subordinated to “separate” requirements which means the content is neither as current or research based as would be expected in a journal publication. The endorsements given on the back cover and the advertising flyer, I fear are the more misleading for the hyperbolic nature of their claims. Is this a useful “primer” for thesaurus work? No, prefer Jean Aitchison's established classic (Aitchison et al., 2000). Is it a useful contribution to facilitate the wider use and acceptance of thesauri as a form of subject access? Possibly.