9.8. Preferred TermsTerminology is critical. The following sections examine some aspects of terminology in detail. 9.8.1. Term FormDefining the form of preferred terms is something that seems easy until you try it. All of a sudden, you find yourself plunged into heated arguments over grammatical minutiae. Should we use a noun or a verb? What's the "correct" spelling? Do we use the singular or plural form? Can an abbreviation be a preferred term? These debates can suck up large amounts of time and energy. Fortunately, the ANSI/NISO thesaurus standard goes into great detail in this area. We recommend following these guidelines, while allowing for exceptions when there's a clear benefit. Some of the issues covered by the standard include:
9.8.2. Term SelectionOf course, selection of a preferred term involves more than the form of the term; you've got to pick the right term in the first place. The ANSI/NISO standard won't help too much here. Consider the following excerpts: Section 3.0. "Literary warrant (occurrence of terms in documents) is the guiding principle for selection of the preferred (term)." Section 5.2.2. "Preferred terms should be selected to serve the needs of the majority of users." This tension between literary warrant and user warrant can be resolved only by reviewing your goals and considering how the thesaurus will be integrated with the web site. Do you want to use preferred terms to educate your users about the industry vocabulary? Will you be relying on preferred terms as your entry vocabulary (e.g., no variants in the index)? You'll need to answer these questions before deciding on the primary source of authority for term selection. 9.8.3. Term DefinitionWithin the thesaurus itself, we're striving for extreme specificity in our use of language. Remember, we're trying to control vocabulary. Beyond the selection of distinctive preferred terms, there are some tools for managing ambiguity. Parenthetical term qualifiers provide a way to manage homographs. Depending on the context of your thesaurus, you may need to qualify the term "Cells" in some of the following ways:
Scope notes provide another way to increase specificity. While they can sometimes look very much like definitions, scope notes are a different beast. They are intended to deliberately restrict meaning to one concept, whereas definitions often suggest multiple meanings. Scope notes are very useful in helping indexers to select the right preferred term. They can sometimes be leveraged in searching or results display to assist users as well. 9.8.4. Term SpecificityThe specificity of terms is another difficult issue that all thesaurus designers must face. For example, should "knowledge management software" be represented as one term, two terms, or three terms? Here's what the standards have to say: ANSI/NISO Z39.19. "Each descriptor . . . should represent a single concept." ISO 2788. "It is a general rule that . . . compound terms should be factored (split) into simple elements." Once again, the standards don't make your life easy. ANSI/NISO leaves you arguing over what constitutes a "single concept." ISO leads you toward uniterms (e.g., knowledge, management, software), which would probably be the wrong way to go in this example. You need to strike a balance based on your context. Of particular importance is the size of the site. As the volume of content grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to use compound terms to increase precision. Otherwise, users get hundreds or thousands of hits for every search (and every preferred term). The scope of content is also important. For example, if we're working on a web site for Knowledge Management magazine, the single term "knowledge management software" or perhaps "software (knowledge management)" may be the way to go. However, if we're working on a broad IT site like CNET, it may be better to use "knowledge management" and "software" as independent preferred terms. |