MultiTes Pro

Features

Allows up to 100 million terms per thesaurus with an unlimited number of hierarchies and the creation of an unlimited number of thesauri.

Supports ANSI/NISO standard relationships.

Supports hierarchical relationships, associated term relationships and cross-references from non-preferred terms.

Manages reciprocal relationships between terms. A taxonomist need only enter or edit a term in a single location and the change will be carried through to all related terms.

Facilitates the merging and subsuming of terms.

Notes and scope notes can be added to terms.

Allows user-defined categories.

Users can create relationships with existing terms and with terms that have not been entered yet, pop-up window notifying the user of this fact.

Functional requirements and details

2MB of disk space for application files.

15 MB of disk space for every 50,000 terms, plus the necessary storage required by the full-text indices

In Australia the product is distributed by Maxus Australia Pty Ltd.

Usability and functionality

Interface and display: The interface is easy to use with no or minimal training required for the experienced taxonomist. More terms and more detail about each term are displayed than is the case for comparable products, including columns for term status, type and number of relationships, note types, category names and language (Hedden, 2008a, p. 51). A special feature enables users to limit the columns displayed.
The thesaurus is displayed in an alphabetical list. Non-preferred terms appear in italics amid the preferred terms. Although it is not possible to shift to any other view, selecting the ‘Hierarchical’ or ‘Top Term’ options from the report menu will yield a text file of these arrangements. The nuisance of having to generate a report in order to obtain these views is mitigated by the ability to restrict the report to a subsection of the thesaurus.
Editing any term involves working in a pop-up window instead of a pane or area within the main window. This pop-up window is detailed, giving the term name, classification, relationships and notes and featuring a tab which shows the full hierarchy in which the term is embedded. However, clicking on a related term brings up another pop-up window. Subsequently, careful management of the windows on the desk top is needed.
One drawback of the interface is that it takes two steps to change a relationship: the user must delete the old relationship before adding the new one (Hedden, 2008a, p. 52). The interface also lacks a spell check.
Search function: The search function is simple, efficient and recognises truncated terms. In the advanced search option, results can be limited to terms which start with a text string, contain a text string, are flagged, are part of a category, have a particular status or term number or contain the search text in their date or notes. Users can jump to an individual record from the list of results in the search window. The search engine can connect with search engines like Google to look up words in the thesaurus.
User-defined categories and relationships: Give the rise of the semantic web, it has become increasingly important for thesaurus tools to support ‘user-defined relationships’. The ability to define more complex relationships (such as ‘produced by’, ‘owned by’, ‘utilised for’) distinguishes a thesaurus from a more basic ontology. (Hedden, 2008a, p.51). In MultiTes, user-defined relationships are allowed provided they are categorised as hierarchical (parent/child, broader/narrower), associative (related) or equivalent (use/use for).
Enforcing taxonomy rules: MultiTes offers automatic validation of conflicting relationships and has a report feature for orphan terms.
Importing and exporting terms: The ease with which terms are imported and exported into a thesaurus determines how well it can be incorporated into other systems. MultiTes’ functionality is mixed in this regard. The program will only accept imported data as a text file in its preferred format. Imported data may also be pasted into the ‘Quick Data Entry’ box, permitting the entry of a couple of terms and a couple of relationships at once.
Data is exported through the generation of reports, in alphabetical, top term and hierarchical displays and with a great deal of control over the information and the number of entries included. Output formats are ANSI text, HTML, XML, CSV delimited or send to printer.
Extension products: MultiTes WDK (Web Deployment Kit) assists developers in publishing a live MultiTes Thesaurus on a website or intranet. Through this facility, end-users can conduct dynamic searches of the thesaurus database in their browsers. MutliTes EDK (Enterprise Deployment Kit) supports the publishing of thesaurus data on corporate servers.

Pricing

MultiTes is relatively inexpensive for organisations, with additional charges if licenses are required for multiple users or for implementation across the enterprise. Training costs are likely to be minimal, given the simple and intuitive interface, but, nevertheless, support, tutorials and a searchable and indexed online help are provided on the Maxus website and MultiTes websites.

Single user: $US295

5 users: $US1295

10 users: $US2495

Examples of MultiTes in use

Maxus provides a list of clients and links to websites which employ the software. Most notably the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies uses the software for its Pathways Thesaurus. The range of clients from organisations spanning diverse fields including health, economics and the natural sciences demonstrates the flexibility of the tool.

Hedden, H. (2008a). Comparative evaluation of thesaurus creation software. The Indexer, 26(2), 50-59.