Jonthan Furner Inter PARES Terminology

Constructing the InterPARES thesaurus:Challenges and opportunities: 

Constructing the InterPARES thesaurus: Challenges and opportunities Jonathan Furner

Four terminological tools: 

Four terminological tools Register Dictionary Glossary Thesaurus four views of one database

Purpose: 

Purpose to improve the effectiveness of IP-related communication and dissemination by helping authors, readers, and intermediaries to select and use terms consistently thus increasing the likelihood ... that authors will use terms in the manner expected by their readers: effective authorship that readers will find documents of the kind they want: effective retrieval that readers will interpret documents in the manner intended by their authors: effective understanding

Some general challenges: 

Some general challenges potential conflict of purpose: is partly descriptive, partly prescriptive founded on current usage ... ... but specifying preferred future usage specificity of (often multiple) senses of technical terms domain-specific variation region-specific variation facet analysis

Terms, qualifiers, definitions, concepts: 

Terms, qualifiers, definitions, concepts a qualified term is made up of ... one term: e.g., “record” three qualifiers: a part of speech: e.g., “noun” a facet: e.g., “object” a context: e.g., “archival science” a qualified term + a definition = a concept a single term (homonym) may have multiple definitions different terms (synonyms) may have the same definition aim: disambiguate homonyms and collocate synonyms

Dictionary records: Example: 

Dictionary records: Example

Dictionary: 

Dictionary vocabulary: IP- “accepted” terms one or more definitions per qualified term one record per definition arrangement: alphabetical data definitions + sources

Glossary records: Example: 

Glossary records: Example

Glossary: 

Glossary vocabulary: IP- “preferred” terms one definition per qualified term one record per qualified term arrangement: alphabetical data: IP- “preferred” definition

Thesaurus records: Example: 

Thesaurus records: Example

Thesaurus: 

Thesaurus vocabulary: IP- “accepted” terms (cf. Dictionary) arrangement: faceted and hierarchical data: links among paradigmatically-related terms hierarchical genus-species whole-part class-instance from IP-nonpreferred to IP-preferred

Current facets: 

Current facets agents “juridical person”; “creator” objects “fonds”; “active record” properties “authenticity”; “date of receipt” actions “authentication”; “emulation” disciplines “archival science”; “records management”

Register record: example: 

Register record: example

Register: 

Register vocabulary: all terms considered for acceptance into Dictionary terms selected manually from automatically-created concordance of IP documents (case-study reports, data models, etc.) “entailed” terms extracted from Glossary definitions and suggested by Thesaurus structure terms selected manually from non-IP term lists terms suggested by IP researchers homonyms disambiguated by part-of-speech, facet, and contextual qualifiers new terms added continuously as set of source documents grows arrangement: alphabetical data: dates and agents of creation, modification, approval, deletion of entries in Dictionary, Glossary, Thesaurus

Some specific challenges: 

Some specific challenges selection of additional vocabulary which sources should be consulted? what procedures and criteria should be used? should composite terms be selected? establishing consistency among products of various IP groups how? assignment of terms to facets is the selection of facets useful and/or appropriate? categorization of terms within facets within each facet, what set of categories would be useful and/or appropriate?

Some specific challenges, cont’d: 

Some specific challenges, cont’d reconciliation of conflicting recommendations, in the various standards, as to form of terms maintenance of integrity of terminological database evaluation how are tools to be evaluated w.r.t. complying with international standards? meeting users’ requirements?