Thesaurus reconciliation

Abstract

The technique of reconciling two Of more thesauri is explained and demonstrated with examples from two actual thesauri which are currently being reconciled to form an international co-operative indexing system in the field of building science. Reconciliation results in the addition of code numbers to the keywords in each thesaurus and the insertion of additional ‘USE’ references, which enable any material indexed with the keywords of one thesaurus to be incorporated in the indexing system based on the other thesaurus without re-indexing. The original thesauri can continue to be used locally as they were before reconciliation, since the keywords themselves remain unchanged and none are added or deleted. The reconciliation process is independent of thesaurus structure.