How to construct a thesaurus

This is the first CILIP course that I've attended though it isn't the first time I've been here (while studying, I carried out a feasibility study for what was then the Library Association).

There are a couple of courses that were on yesterday and the coffee and registration is in one room for both courses. This is a great idea from a networking perspective but the room is full of tables and chairs meaning that delegates aren't as encouraged to mingle as much as they might be if there were only a few tables. The result, though, is that if people are talking they're only talking to the one or two people in their immediate vicinity. (Hmmm...got here first and sat at a table...room began to fill up but no one is sitting at my table :( Could it be the shaved head, goatee and swastika tattooed on my forehead? Kidding.)

So, at 9:30, we were called up to our meeting room to begin the training session. The presenter, Keith Trickey, was very knowledgeable and a good speaker and he dove straight into things. I have a bit of an academic hidden inside me who really enjoys talking/thinking about things like the ways in which nouns/verbs define adjectives/adverbs as much as the adjectives/adverbs describe the nouns/verbs. For example: heavy suitcase (a suitcase that is heavy) vs. heavy smoker (a person who smokes a lot). This relationship is important because in a thesaurus, words are usually separated from each other meaning that the information that travels in the context is lost. The same is true when verbs are turned into nouns – the verb carries some additional information in its conjugation and context (e.g. manages --> management) that it loses when it becomes a noun.

Anyway, having talked about these problems with dissecting words and compiling them into a thesaurus, it was straight into some of the rules and methods. (It is not my intention to record all of my notes here – I have assembled a mind map to supplement the course handouts for my future reference). Then it was in to some exercises. The exercises were fun and helped to illustrate some of the challenges and to demonstrate some of the rules in practice.

Finally, we spent a bit of time talking about the process of creating a thesaurus. This included ‘top tips’ and a look at some of the software that can be used for creating thesauri. My only criticism of the course, which I thought was otherwise really good, was that the only piece of software that we really talked about in any detail and had a look at was Multites. Quite a lot of time was given over to playing around with it – I started to get bored here...I don’t need to see each of the ways you can add a term in this particular programme.

On the whole, my feedback form contained positive comments/scores (with the exception of this one point about the time spent on Multites).

So, what did I learn? Well, the rules for assembling a list (like whether terms should be singular or plural) are good practical things that I can take away and put into use when it comes to creating a subject thesaurus. I think that I also have a better understanding about the different strengths and weaknesses of the different options (subject headings, taxonomies, thesauri, etc). I also feel more confident about evaluating existing thesauri for application to my contexts.

Having consolidated my thoughts from yesterday, the next set of actions on this matter that I have are around identifying potential existing thesauri for our use and then looking for anyone else who is looking to introduce or has recently introduced, a rail industry-specific thesaurus. Having seen what is involved in creating one from scratch, doing so is definitely my last choice!

Modular Railway Induction

When I had my interview for this role, I made it clear that I had no knowledge of the railway industry beyond that acquired as a consumer. This, I was assured, was not going to be a problem. Aside from speaking to relevant people, I requested, and was registered onto, an industry familiarisation course at the end of November (2006). This turned out to be a two-day course aimed at giving participants an introduction to the different aspects of the rail industry and how they work (and the terms used to describe them). The course consisted of the following sections:

1. The Structure and Operations of the British Rail industry
2. Railway Documentation
3. Permanent Way
4. Structures & Clearances
5. Signalling & Telecommunications
6. Overhead Line Equipment & Third Rail Electrification
7. On-Track Plant
8. Planning Engineering Work and Line Blockages
9. Railway Safety Legislation

In addition, we were given a glossary of railway terminology. I was sorry that it didn’t include a section on Rolling Stock (along with its associated topics such as Vehicle/Track Interaction, etc.) as this would have rounded out the course to provide a complete introduction. Having said that, I think it would have to have been a three-day course if it were to include Rolling Stock because, as it was, we ended up running short of time and having to skip the On-Track Plant section.

The course consisted of a great deal of lecturing at the beginning and to be honest, I don’t really know what other way there is for covering those first two topics. I found the next four sections really interesting (sections 3 to 6), but then I have always been interested in how things work. Our instructor had set up at the front of the room a pretty large and comprehensive working model and we used this to illustrate the rest of the sections.

On the whole, it was a really good course and it was certainly very useful. I understand a lot more about the company’s role in the industry and how it relates to the rest of the industry organisations. I also understand the content of our research a great deal more and know what most of the terms and acronyms that are used mean (and for those that I don’t know, the glossary is proving pretty useful.)