ABSTRACT

Thesaurus data structures and exchange formats (ways of tagging and encoding thesauri for transfer between computer applications) are discussed. Single- and multiple-user thesaurus software is functionally similar, apart from scale. Several lists of requirements for such software have been published, and important aspects are summarized here, including input, editing, output, and the interfaces used by indexers and searchers. The way in which thesaurus software may be extended to cover other types of controlled vocabularies is covered briefly, followed by issues that arise in management and updating of thesauri, including changes to collections of documents indexed by previous versions and the mapping and merging of thesauri to provide a common search interface.