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. Evaluations
. . Navigation
. . Editing
. . Terms
. . Relationships
. . Import/export
. . Collaboration
. Summary
INF440: Introduction to Information Architecture
Assignment 3
Timothy Godfrey
Student no 11348115
This website was produced with Macromedia Dreamweaver v8
Navigation, display and reporting features evaluation
Navigation, display and reporting features include the capacity of the software to:
- display or produce reports in a sequence of user defined identifiers or notations
- display parts of a vocabulary under a facet or node assigned by the user
- produce reports and displays including terms, scope notes and relationships in alphabetical and hierarchical formats
- search for and display all instances of a given term including the option for truncated searching
- to browse from a term to any of its connected terms
Term Tree 2000
The Dog's star rating: 
The Term Tree standard display is a standard Windows based interface, with toolbars and menus on the top of the screen, a term tree display on the left side of the screen and a term editing screen on the right.
The view menu in Term Tree allows views by all terms, top terms only, preferred terms, non preferred terms, non authorised terms and inactive terms. All are displayed in alphabetical order.
Term Tree provides a range of reports in text or MS Word formats including hierachical and concatenation reports showing each term against its narrower terms on one line, term relationships and category reports, keyword in context (KWIC) and keyword out of context (KWOC) reports. Reports are generated in alphabetical order. Reports can be customised to include all terms between a given start and end term in an alphabetical range. The reports menu allows a limited range of selection criteria for all terms, preferred terms, top terms, inactive terms and non authorised terms. It is not possible to configure either reports or the term pane to display terms in anything other than alphabetical order.
The search menu in term tree allows for truncated searching using wildcards “*” and “?”. The search menu allows searching across all fields or individually on each of the 11 available fields. Searching retrieves only the first or next occurrence of a given search term, meaning that the software cannot display all instances of a given term at once.
The Term Tree interface allows navigation between terms either through the term pane, which displays broader and narrower relationships, or through the relationship pane where related terms contain hyperlinks to the relationship window for that term.
MultiTes Pro
The Dog's star rating:
The MultiTes interface is a standard Windows based screen with toolbars displaying across the top of the screen, a simple search menu and an alphabetical display of all terms in the thesaurus.
The reporting area allows the generation of reports and on screen displays based on alphabetical , top term, hierarchical, subject categories, classifications and key word out of context (KWOC) formats. Reports can be customised to include only specified fields and specified terms in an alphabetical sequence. A reporting wizard enables selection of terms on the basis of relationships, subject category and standard metadata fields such as approval status and input or approval date, but only allows alphabetical reporting. Reports cannot be displayed in a user defined sequence. The reporting menu allows printing to screen or printer in text format, or saving to file in a range of formats.
Reports in a user defined sequence can only be produced by developing a classification scheme of user defined codes in the categories function, assigning the classification to the desired terms and printing a category report through the print menu. Although it is possible to assign nodes and flags to given terms it is not possible to limit reports and displays on this basis.
MultiTes includes a simple and advanced truncated search capability. Simple search displays on the main screen and allows searching for terms using whole words in the term. Advanced search contains a wide range of search methods using any number of characters, including terms starting with a given character or characters, postable or valid terms, terms containing a given character or characters in the term name or notes field, and terms assigned a given category, term number or status. Selected search results display in the standard display format including record details, multilevel hierarchy, 2-way hierarchy and the edit screen.
Navigation to related terms is possible in the record details, multilevel and two way hierarchy screens. Users can launch an internet search for a given term in Yahoo or Google search engines from the record details display.
Webchoir TCS-10
The Dog says: "Congratulations - it's a dogonomy!" 
Webchoir includes a standard Windows based interface with toolbars and menus across the top of the page, a term tree display on the left side of the screen and node detail view on the right. Users access the term edit screen by right clicking on the term in the term tree view.
The term tree display on the left of the screen has alphabetically and hierarchical display options. Reporting options include a wide range of reports including alphabetical, hierarchical, a designated portion of the hierarchy, KWOC and category reports on all or a selection of terms. Additional reports include Top Term, Use for, and category list reports. Reports can be generated in html or text format, with formatting and field selection options available in the report options menu. User defined fields can be included in reports but it is not possible to produce a report in order of user defined sequences.
TCS-10 has a website creation feature in the tools menu. The system can generate a website in a frames or non frames format with a page for each thesaurus entry.
Searching can be carried out across one or all hierarchies in a thesaurus using the simple or advanced search menu at the top of the screen above the tree display. Truncated searches are allowed through the use of wildcards, and boolean searches can be carried out using symbols to indicate boolean operators. Search results are displayed in a pop up window. The search results screen allows users to save the search or the search results.
The display includes a web search option where users can select a term in the term tree display and combine the selected term with related or broader terms and launch an internet search using a number of search engines.
Browsing to broader and narrower terms is possible through the tree display area. Browsing to broader and related terms is available through the node detail area on the right of the screen.
For its sophisticated range of displays, reports and search options TCS-10 is the preferred package for navigation, display and reporting features.
Some external sites
Software sites:
Term Tree 2000
MultiTes Pro
Taxonomy sites:
QUT Controlled vocabularies page
Guidelines and standards: