JSTOR Labs projects have begun utilizing more article-specific terms, or keywords. For example, in both Understanding Shakespeare and Classroom Readings, you’ll find keywords underneath article titles, separated by vertical pipes. This interesting topic came from the JSTOR blog post, “Labs’ No-Longer-Secret Ingredient: the JSTOR Thesaurus.”
JSTOR has content across virtually all of the academic disciplines from hundreds of different publishers. They have been working on a way of classifying all of that disparate content in a consistent way. This obviously would allow the user to better find the content that they’re looking for.
One of those ways is utilizing the JSTOR Thesaurus, a semantic index, or a rules-based hierarchal list of terms. Currently there are over 57 thousand terms in the Thesaurus, but they never stop adding, editing and adjusting terms, as well as the rules they operate under.
All records management systems need a system of indexing to create findability. We know that indexing against a strong, standards-based taxonomy can ensure comprehensive search results. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ISO/ANSI/NISO compliant taxonomies to produce comprehensive results.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
