Page 118 - DLIS405_INFORMATION_STORAGE_AND_RETRIEVAL

Unit 12: Vocabulary Control

A controlled vocabulary must compensate for the problems caused by synonymy by ensuring that Notes
each concept is represented by a single preferred term. The vocabulary should list the other synonyms
and variants as non-preferred terms with USE references to the preferred term.
There are other types of “equivalent” terms besides synonyms which require vocabulary control.

Semantic Relationships

Various types of semantic relationships may be identified among the terms in a controlled vocabulary.
These include equality relationships, hierarchical relationships and associative relationships which
may be defined as required for a particular application.

Using Warrant to Select Terms
The process of selecting terms for inclusion in controlled vocabularies involves consulting various
sources of words and phrases as well as criteria based on:
• the natural language used to describe content objects (literary warrant),
• the language of users (user warrant), and
• the needs and priorities of the organization (organizational warrant).

Literary Warrant
Assessing literary warrant involves consulting reference sources such as dictionaries or textbooks as
well as existing vocabularies. The word or phrases chosen should match as closely as possible the
prevailing descriptions for the concept in the literature.

Organizational Warrant

Determining organization warrant requires identifying the form or forms of terms that are preferred
by the organization or organizations that will use the controlled vocabulary.

User Warrant

Creating lists of potential terms to enhance completeness of the vocabulary.
• Organizing candidate terms into broad categories to determine what categories users prefer
and what they should be called.
• Placing candidate terms into a tentative set of broad categories to validate categories that
have been created.
• Reviewing drafts of the vocabulary to add missing terms, delete terms that are incorrect or
obsolete, create more useful term forms, and identify and correct missing and/or incorrect
relationships among terms.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. There are ...... principles of vocabulary control that guide their design and development.
2. A major goal of vocabulary control is to ensure that each distinct concept refers to a ...... .
3. ...... in natural language when a word or phrase has more than one meaning.

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