Presentation given at a Centre for Information Literacy Reserach seminar by Kate Coleson and Chloe Furnival on 6th August 2009

1. DEVELOPING A DRAFT IL
THESAURUS
Kate Coleson and Chloe Furnival August 2009

2. Outline
 Introduction
 IL thesaurus development
 Selection of terms
 Testing of terms
 Thesaurus construction
 Decisions involved
 Possible uses
 Future developments

3. Introduction to the project
 Develop a draft Information Literacy Thesaurus
 Using the literature and the IL weblog
 Gathering views from potential users
 Potential applications of thesaurus

4. IL Thesaurus development
Term Selection
 Initial questions
 How many terms?
 How long to spend on selection?
 Where to look?
 What words to use when searching?
 Relevance of term?
 How deep to go?

5. Term selection...
 How many terms & how long to spend?
 Limited by 3 month timescale:
 Approx 1 month on selecting terms
 Approx 200 terms
 8 top terms
 Where to look & what search terms to use?
 IL Journals and books plus the IL Weblog
 Easier than first thought, but the harder part was yet to
come

6. Term selection....
 Relevance of the term?
 How to decide whether a term should be included
 Popularityin literature
 Relevance to other terms
 How deep to go?
 How many definitions or variations of a term
 Partly decided by timescale
 Partly decided by perceived usefulness

7. IL Thesaurus development
Term Testing
 Initial questions
 How many terms should be tested?
 How do we test them?
 What do we use to test them?
 Databases, journals, thesauri?
 How long to spend testing?
 How useful are they?
 Key IL figures to approach?
 Constrained by timescale

8. Term testing
 How long, how many and what to use?
 Limited by timescale so chosen by:
 Possible ambiguities/ more than one definition
 Rarity of term – would it generate enough results
 Gut feeling! (educated guess)
 Preferred tools of developers
 LISA
 Produced very good list of results for many terms tested
 JIL and American JIL
 Not easy to search which resulted in disappointing results
 IL Weblog
 Key area for IL so used to judge term relevance

9. Term testing
 How useful are the terms?
 Early stages of development initial terms tested by
colleagues of another project
 Proved many of the terms were useful and helped in
identifying more
 Key IL figures to approach
 Limited by timescale and contacts
 Early stages of development – initial thoughts wanted
for future development ideas

10. Thesaurus construction
 Initial questions
 How do you construct a thesaurus?
 Having never done one before
 What theories should be followed?
 More theories than envisaged
 What structure should we use?
 Not over complicated
 How to link terms together?
 Easily readable and useable

11. Thesaurus construction...
 Construction, theory & structure choice
 Gilchristet al (2000) Thesaurus Construction and Use: A
Practical Manual
 Inductive construction:
 Descriptors
 Non-descriptors
 Use of Top Terms to provide overall construction to
group together words and phrases under which more
broader terms could be linked

12. Thesaurus construction...
 Linking terms together
 Top terms followed by:
 Broader
 Narrow
 Use/Use For (UF)
 Related

13. Possible uses
 Indexing tool for journals, databases & blogs
 Standardises terminology
 Search term generator
 Using the same words as the indexers
 Generate a more definitive definition
 Create visibility & publicity for the discipline

14. Future developments
 Delphi Study
 Informed decisions by IL protagonists & experts
 Ongoing process – needs to be managed
 Constant modification to keep up with IL
 TT of Information Literacy
 Debate on what terms it should contain:
 Simplistic
‘IL’ terms narrower than IL?
 Or terms that form part of the Thesaurus but not the
concept?

15. Questions?
 Any other uses?
 Timescale for development?
 Term selection process?
 Who should be involved?