Access Insights
Equivalence Relationships
Terms in an equivalence relationship refer to the same concept (or sometimes a roughly equivalent concept). They are usually synonyms. As has already been discussed, there should be only one “indexing term” or preferred term in your thesaurus for any given concept. You can and should include synonyms of those preferred terms in your thesaurus as synonyms. And the way to do that is with equivalence relationships. The synonyms that aren’t “preferred terms” are “non-preferred terms” in the same term record. Your taxonomy software instructions will indicate how to add non-preferred terms to term records; this action will establish an equivalence relationship between the preferred term and each non-preferred term.
Read MoreScope Notes and Editorial Notes in Taxonomies and Thesauri
Scope notes are another way to put a restriction on meaning. Scope notes are what you want to share with the world; editorial notes are what we will share with the team. A scope note might delineate the meaning itself. It might tell you the range of topics covered by the term; it might be instructions for use. We keep the term history in a separate field and we also keep the source in a separate field. Some thesauri will put all of that together in the Scope Notes field. Sometimes the Scope Notes need to be reciprocal. If they refer to another term, you need to post it in both places so that people can get to it.
Read MoreAccess Integrity Announces Debut of HCPCS Tagger Technology
The patented, rule-based application searches and analyzes the text in providers’ notes in electronic medical records to suggest highly relevant Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes for human review. Access Integrity CEO John Kuranz says the new technology will revolutionize the medical coding and billing industries.
Read MoreThe Zombies Are Coming
Halloween is approaching fast, and unlike most zombies, we here at Access Innovations wanted to be sure we are ready for the hordes of zombies bound to be knocking down our doors on October 31st. Are you ready? If you’re not, never fear. We created a very unique tool to help you keep your head (pun intended) during the zombie apocalypse: a zombie taxonomy.
Read MoreData Harmony Users Group Meeting – “Then and Now: Addressing the Changing Needs of Content Development”
Monday, February 10, is a full-day overview of the Data Harmony software suite. Attendees will learn how, why, and when taxonomies are used; how to start and maintain a taxonomy; and about resources available for taxonomy development. This information will provide a solid foundation for deeper understanding of the core meeting sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Read MoreBottom Up or Top Down?
Bottom up and top down are two opposite (but completely compatible) approaches to developing hierarchical structure. The controlled vocabulary standard ANSI/NISO Z39.19 explains the two approaches as follows:
Read MoreInformation Science Master Gone
This sad news was brought to our attention today and though we learned of it later than most, we couldn’t let it go by without mentioning. Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster, 79, of Urbana, passed away on Sunday, August 25, 2013 in his home.
Read MoreTypes of Hierarchical Relationships
The defining characteristic of taxonomies is the presence of hierarchical relationships. Information specialists recognize several types of hierarchical relationships. Generic relationship – As explained in ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 (page 47), “This relationship identifies the link between a class and its members or species.” The generic relationship is generally called the Broader term/Narrower term relationship. In most cases, it’s easy in traditional biological taxonomy of organisms, because of its well-established and well-known groupings of phyla, genera, families, species, and so forth, i.e., Rodents and NT Squirrels.
Read MoreWebinar on Practical Classification – This Week!
The SLA Taxonomy Division presents the second webinar in their Practical Classification series. Sharon Garewal, from JSTOR, and Marcie Zaharee, from MITRE, will each describe how they use tools to build thesauri and classify data. Mark your calendar now for October 3, 2013 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST. The webinars are free to division members. SLA members may attend for $15, or contact SLA to add the division for $20. Non-members may attend for $50. Register here.
Read MoreKeeping Things Clear
In a controlled vocabulary, we strive for disambiguation, the restriction and clarification of meaning. We want to determine and clarify what exactly is meant by each term. Reading could mean a town in England or it could be a communication process. We might have the word ‘cells’, meaning biological microsystems or electrical equipment or prison housing or other things. You can have a terrorist cell. Cell is a broadly used term, and without some kind of a modifier around it, we can’t be sure what it is exactly.
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