DEVELOPING A DRAFT IL THESAURUSKate Coleson and Chloe Furnival August 2009

Outline

Introduction IL thesaurus development

Selection of terms Testing of terms

Thesaurus construction Decisions involved

Possible uses Future developments

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

IL Thesaurus developmentTerm 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?

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

Term selection....

Relevance of the term? How to decide whether a term should be included Popularity in 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

IL Thesaurus developmentTerm 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

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

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

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

Thesaurus construction...

Construction, theory & structure choice Gilchrist et 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

Thesaurus construction...

Linking terms together Top terms followed by: Broader Narrow Use/Use For (UF) Related

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

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?

Questions?

Any other uses? Timescale for development? Term selection process? Who should be involved?