Page 212 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 11: Indexing Language: Types and Characteristics

The conceptual difference between naming or describing an object and grouping it with others so Notes
that it can be found. Both are essential steps, but an information retrieval thesaurus is primarily
concerned with grouping.
The British Standard for thesaurus construction recommends that plural terms should be used, except
for a few well-defined cases, and my view is that this practice should be followed. Unfortunately,
there are many records in museum collections which have been given singular “object names”, and
the work of changing these to plurals in a move to a thesaurus structure may be so great as to
require some compromise.

Figure 11.7

12
The cataloguer thinks:
“This is a clock”. 9 3

6

12
12
The enquirer asks: 9 3 11 1
10 2
6 11 12 1
" What clocks do you have?" 9 3
10 2
8 4
9 3
7 5
8 4 6
7 5
6
Prefer plural terms because:
We should design the catalogue to fit the way the user thinks.

Clocks is the name of a category, including many types, so
plural is more logical.

Parts and wholes

The British Standard recommends that when indexing parts or components, separate terms should
be assigned for the component and for the object of which it forms part, so that aircraft engines would
be indexed by the two terms Aircraft and Engines. This causes problems in a museum collection,
however, because items indexed in this way would be retrieved in a search for Aircraft, when only
whole aircraft were being sought.
It therefore seems preferable to use a term such as Aircraft components. A particular engine may well
be an aircraft component, but it is not an aircraft. Similarly a timer from a cooker can be indexed by
the terms Timers and Cooker components, and a handle broken from a vase might be indexed
as Handles and Vase fragments. There needs to be local agreement on how this approach is to be
applied to a particular collection.

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