Page 211 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Information Analysis and Repackaging

Notes
> > dinner jackets
> > donkey jackets
> > reefer jackets
> leggings
> pullovers
> rainwear
> > raincoats
> shawls
> shirts
> skirts
> suits
> trousers
> > jeans
> > shorts
>> slacks

Abstract Terms and Disciplines
Many thesauri have been created with the intention of being used to index documentary material,
and thus they include many terms which relate to abstract concepts, disciplines and areas of discussion,
as well as the names of concrete objects which are of primary interest to museums. We have to be
careful to be consistent in how we use these terms. The most straightforward way is to concentrate
first on what objects actually are-spades are Spades and should be given this term, rather than the
area in which they are used, whether it is gardening or grave digging.
You may well wish to allocate abstract and discipline terms to objects too, so that you can retrieve
all the objects to do with Dentistry, Laundry, Warfare or Food preparation. These terms can also be
included in the thesaurus, so long as they are not given hierarchical relationships to names of objects.
They should be given RT relationships to an appropriate level of object terms.
Some thesauri, such as ROOT, interfile terms of different types in their hierarchical display.
Indentation in such cases does not necessarily indicate a BT/NT relationship. The relationships are
shown in ROOT’s alphabetical sequence, and it is unfortunate that they are not distinguished in the
hierarchical one.
Because these abstract terms do not describe what the object is, they could be put into a field in the
catalogue record labelled concept or subject, distinct from the field containing terms which name the
object. I do not think that such a distinction will generally be helpful to users, however, and there
seems to be no disadvantage in putting both types of term into a single field so that they can easily
be searched as alternatives or in combination. Such a field would not be correctly called name and I
therefore prefer to call it simply indexing terms or subject indexing terms.

Singular or Plural Terms

There has been much discussion on whether thesaurus terms should be expressed in the singular or
the plural. believe that the difficulty arises from different views of what is being done when a term is
assigned to an object record. If a cataloguer thinks that (s) he is naming the object in hand, (s)he will
naturally use the singular: “This is a clock”. If (s)he is assigning the object to a category of similar
objects, the thought will be “This belongs in the category of clocks”. An enquirer will normally ask
for a category, so the latter form will be more natural and logical.

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