Thesaurus Master: Vocabulary, taxonomy and metadata management

Description:

Thesaurus Master is a custom-built solution developed by Data Harmony in 2010. It is a useful tool to manage taxonomy and metadata (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 1). The tool develops a vocabulary that can store internal and external metadata about resources that the organisation has used (see Figure One: Thesaurus Master example). It securely keeps a record of these resources for future use. Your organisation can develop an organisation structure that organises the information that suits (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 2; Hedden, 2010, para. 9).

Figure One: Thesaurus Master example (Redmond-Neal & Bruce, 2012, para. 5)

The software caters for any knowledge management model and will integrate well with your organisations vision and goals (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 1; Chaudhry, 2010, p. 772). The thesaurus master tool is useful as it can also be used for collaboration and information sharing via the internet. Overall, keeping a record of each resource will benefit all employees and can assist tracking resource types to increase knowledge (Chaudhry, 2010, p. 775).

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Features:

The Thesaurus Master software has effective functionality to find and organise information. The tool can create and/or import keyword terms you have created. In addition, once you have found a document you can define the scope of use and create a rule so that finding that document is easy (Chaudhry, 2010, p. 772). Definitions can be refined and continuously improved to make searches and keywords current and allows maximum use from within the organisation.

The software also integrates with other packages such as WebThes, which means you can collaboratively work with other institutions. This would increase and re-define what keywords you can use to find specific information (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 4). The application accommodates formal thesaurus structure of many terms (broad, narrow, terminology, and history), notes and definitions increasing the chance of finding and capturing useful resources for your organisation. The product has been created using international thesaurus standards 2788 (monolingual) and 5964 (multilingual) that formulate the database and ensures compatibility with other systems (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 3).

The tool is web-based and means that you can restrict access to some controls that your employees use. It can associate relationships with terms and thesauri (Chaudhry, 2010, p. 775; Hedden, 2010, para. 8).  Overall, this will benefit your organisation as resources can be found easily, and will help organise knowledge that your organisation holds.

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Benefits:

The Thesaurus Master has been designed for ease of use. It is very easy to install and make simple customisation to suit your organisation’s needs (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 1). This means definitions and keywords can be added easily without specialised technical knowledge required. Navigation and browsing can be easily created to suit user needs and this can benefit the usability of the system (Jagerman, 2006, para. 6). Also specific metadata management standards have been followed which increases integration with other systems your organisation uses (Access Innovations, 2013, para. 3; Langville & Meyer, 2012, p. 142; Verhaart, 2008, p. 55). A thesaurus can be created using Thesaurus Master by omitting an associative (related term) relationship in a resource and this can also streamline your taxonomy (Hedden, 2010, para. 7). This would enhance and create a vocabulary that is specific for your organisation and will uniquely capture specific knowledge for future use.

The overall taxonomy should allow the functionality to capture audio, video and other document files. Metadata should be stripped out of these files and be captured. The Thesaurus Master allows document data to be captured as soon as it is entered into the application (Chaudhry, 2010, p. 783). It means all electronic knowledge entered is captured and can be used effectively. The system would be more robust as it can handle multiple entries at once and information can be retrieved from the internet. Metadata that is captured from each source will be scalable as it is interoperable with other systems (Roszkiewicz, 2010, p. 295). It means metadata can be integrated with other packages easily and others can share sources found to others via the internet. Additionally, this will help streamline the taxonomy model the organisation has set as metadata can be extracted to match requirements and to be compatible with other systems (Verhaart, 2008, pp. 54-57).

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Tool Evaluation:

For a professional evaluation of the tool please click here

References:

Access Innovations. (2013). Thesaurus master: Taxonomy and metadata management made

Chaudhry, A. S. (2010). Assessment of taxonomy building tools. The Electronic Library, 28(6),

Hedden, H. (2010). Tools for managing taxonomies. Retrieved from
Jagerman, E. (2006). Creating, maintaining and applying quality taxonomies. Retrieved from

Langville, A. V., & Meyer, C. D. (2012). Google's pagerank and beyond: The science of search

Redmond-Neal, A., & Bruce, J. (2012). Data harmony thesaurus master. Retrieved from

Roszkiewicz, R. (2010). Enterprise metadata management: How consolidation simplifies
Verhaart, M. H. (2008). The virtualme: A knowledge acquisition framework (Unpublished

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