Thesaurus Management Tools: An Overview

Thesaurus management tools and software provide support for the development and maintenance of taxonomies, occasionally also encompassing the upload of taxonomies to websites and intranets.  Building a thesaurus manually using a word processing or database program can be a time-consuming task.  Thesaurus management tools take care of the formatting and other clerical issues and ensure that the rules of the taxonomy are not violated.

Thesaurus management tools are available as standalone products and as part of another software product or package, as is the case with the Oracle Thesaurus Management System and STAR vocabulary control).  Packages assist users in integrating the thesaurus with a site’s cataloguing and search functions, while standalone software aids independent thesaurus development work, especially when a single thesaurus is to be applied to multiple data retrieval systems (Willpower Information, 2010).

The decision to use or not use a thesaurus management tool predominantly depends upon the size and scope of the project and whether a single taxonomist or a team are involved (Hedden, 2008a, p. 50).

 

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

Willpower Information. (2010). Software for building and editing thesauri, from http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/thessoft.htm