| "A thesaurus is the controlled vocabulary of an indexing system, arranged in a known order and structured so that synonymous, hierarchical, and associative relationships among terms are clearly displayed and identified by standardized relationship indicators. Its purposes are to ensure consistency in indexing, especially in information management and retrieval systems, and to facilitate the retrieval of information. Regardless of the material being cataloged or indexed, whether works of art, journal articles, architectural drawings, photographs, the contents of books, or sets of family papers, successful information management and retrieval depend upon the cataloger's or indexer's ability to anticipate the needs and viewpoints of their users and to determine the essence of a document's meaning or the name and physical characteristics of an object." |
In 1994, several museum staff members were trained by term editors of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) to conduct basic term research. Mystic Seaport has been involved with the staff at the Getty Information Institute for the purpose of incorporating maritime vocabulary into the AAT. In addition to contributing to this important and internationally recognized work, the experience that we have gained has given us an effective and sound procedure for also researching terms that might be more local in scope. At a basic level, we recognize that coordination of the words that we use will go a long way to actually connecting our different information sources.
last updated on 09/20/99