TESAURUS

SEJARAH
Istilah thesaurus berasal dari kata Yunani, thesaurus artinya
kekayaan, harta atau gudang.
Orang yang pertama kali menggunakan istilah thesaurus ialah
Brunetto Latini (1220-1294) dalam bukunya yang berjudul
Le livre du tresor.
Pada abad ke - 16 istilah thesaurus muncul dalam kamus bahasa
Latin dan Yunani masing-masing dalam Dictionarium seu
Linguae Latinae Thesaurus dan Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
(1572). Keduanya diterbitkan oleh Estiennes, filolog dan penerbit
Prancis yang terkenal pada masa tersebut.
Dalam dunia dokumentasi, khususnya dalam bidang
referensi, istilah thesaurus selalu dikaitkan dengan karya
Peter Mark Roget, Thesaurus of English Words and
phrases. Karya ini diterbitkan pertama kali pada tahun
1852. Hingga kini terus diperbarui.
Istilah thesaurus dalam sistem temu balik informasi baru
muncul pada tahun 1957, dikemukakan oleh Helen
Browson dan kemudian oleh H.P. Luhn. Mereka berdua
mengemukakan istilah thesaurus dalam hubungan dengan
pemakaian komputer dalam bidang dokumentasi.
Pada tahun 1957 itu, C.L. Bernier mulai menyebutkan
kegunaan thesaurus tugas penyimpanan dan temu balik
informasi sebagai berikut: “A limited thesaurus would have
been to be effective way of bringging the relevant terms to the
attention of the searcher, if the vocabulary proses too large to
be read completely each time for selection"
 DEFINISI

Dalam bidang pengolahan informasi, thesaurus dapat diartikan

menurut fungsi dan strukturnya.
Menurut fungsinya, thesaurus ialah sebuah sarana pengawasan
kosakata yang dipakai untuk menerjemahkan bahasa alamiah ke dalam
bahasa indeks.
Menurut strukturnya, thesaurus ialah daftar kata yang
berhubungan satu sama lain secara semantik maupun generik.
Daftar kata itu selalu diawasi, bersifat dinamis serta lazimnya
hanya mencakup satu bidang ilmu tertentu saja.
Dari definisi tersebut, kita dapat mengatakan bahwa hakekat
thesaurus adalah kata yang disusun menurut urutan sistematis
ataupun abjad.
Thesaurus sebenarnya dapat dianggap sebuah
skema klasifikasi untuk istilah-istilah yang saling
terkait membentuk struktur bahasa sehingga sebuah
kata dapat dipahami dengan kata lainnya. Kata
“bebek” dapat dipahami sebagai “unggas”, tapi
juga sebagai “motor bebek”, kalau thesaurus
mengaitkan ketiganya. Juga dapat diketahui bahwa
“unggas” lebih umum dari pada “bebek”, dan
bahwa “motor bebek” bersifat lebih khusus lagi.
Dapat dilihat bahwa fungsi dan kegunaan thesaurus terletak
pada struktur yang mengaitkan satu konsep dengan konsep
lainnya melalui berbagai hirarki dan maknanya. Ini adalah
soal bahasa dan soal kesepakatan – dua soal yang menjadi
penting kalau kita bicara tentang Information Retrieval
(IR).
Untuk dapat berfungsi dengan baik, sebuah thesaurus harus dibuat
dengan membaca sebanyak mungkin literatur tentang suatu subyek
tertentu yang ingin dicakup, harus dapat mencakup semua istilah yang
ditemukan di literatur itu, dan tentunya dapat mencakup banyak kata
yang walaupun tidak populer tetap perlu dikaitkan dengan kata yang
populer.
Dalam berbagai terbitannya, Unesco memberi definisi thesaurus
sebagai berikut:
“A thesaurus is a controlled and dynamic vocabulary of
semantically and generically related terms which comprehensively
covers a specipic domain of knowledge. This vocabulary is a
systematically and/or alphabetical collection of descriptors as well as
indicators of their relationship”.
 SUSUNAN THESAURUS
• Bagian kosakata
Bagian ini lazimnya memuat daftar deskriptor yang disusun secara
sistematis bersama-sama kata kunci, yang kadang-kadang disertai
dengan sinonimnya. Lazimnya kata kunci dicetak dengan huruf tebal
dihubungkan dengan penunjukan silang dari sinonimnya.
• Peta semantik
Peta ini merupakan jaringan konseptual di mana semua deskriptor
dikumpulkan. Di sini ditunjukkan hubungan paradigma (hubungan
genus spesies) antara masing-masing deskriptor. Cara penunjukkannya
ialah dengan penggabungan kelas menurut abjad atau dalam sebuah
peta di mana hubungan paradigma ditunjukkan dengan cara
menggunakan anak panah.
• Pengaturan konversi bahasa alamiah ke bahasa indeks.
Dalam pengaturan ini diberikan peraturan untuk mengubah bahasa
alamiah ke bahasa indeks, definisi, konversi nama lembaga, rumus
kimia, spesies biologi. Juga dijelaskan ketentuan tentang leksikografis,
pola permintaan informasi dan pola formulasi jawaban
• Daftar deskriptor yang disusun menurut abjad.
Dengan kata lain ini adalah indeks deskriptor sekaligus indeks dari
thesaurus. Di sini pengertian indeks ialah daftar istilah yang disusun
menurut abjad.
CONTOH THESAURUS

Masing-masing menggunakan lambang serta

tanda yang berbeda-beda. Karena itu untuk
menggunakan sebuah thesaurus, kita harus memahami
lambang yang digunakannya.
Sebagai contoh Thesaurus of Engineering terms menggunakan tanda
tanda sebagai berikut:
UF (used for) – digunakan u/ sinonim.
BT (broader term) – digunakan u/ deskriptor generik.
NT (narrower term) – digunakan u/ deskriptor khas.
RT (related term) – u/ deskriptor lain yang berkaitan.
Tanda & (ampersand) digunakan u/ deskriptor yang mampu
menggantikan deskriptor lain untuk menunjukkan konsep yang lebih
sempit, asal deskriptor yang digantikan menggunakan lambang #.
Berikut ini contoh pemakaiannya:
Scientists
UF Scientific personnel
BT Personnel
Professional personnel
NT Chemists
Physicists
RT Engineers
 WHAT IS A THESAURUS?
A thesaurus is a tool for vocabulary control.
By guiding indexers and searchers about which terms to use,
it can help to improve the quality of retrieval.
Usually, a thesaurus is designed for indexing and searching
in a specific subject area. Examples of subject areas covered
by thesauri are education, metallurgy, art and architecture.
WHAT IS IN A THESAURUS?

A thesaurus gives several types of information to

indexers and searchers.
• Preferred Terms
Obviously, the thesaurus has to indicate which
terms indexers and searchers are allowed to use.
The terms are called preferred terms
• Non-preferred Terms In addition
to preferred terms, a thesaurus also needs to indicate some terms
that indexers and searchers are not to use.
These terms are called non-preferred terms. It should be possible to
look up a non-preferred terms and see what preferred terms should
be used instead. This will save time and make it less likely that the
best preferred term will be missed.
A thesaurus also usually allows you to look up a
preferred term and see its non-preferred terms. This can
give you a better idea of what the term is supposed to
mean.
• Semantic Relations
As well as linking prefered terms with non-perfered
terms, a thesaurus also shows links between different
prefered terms.
These links are usually for semantic relations.
• Guides to Application
A good thesaurus should make it clear what a
term is meant to cover. It can accomplish this to
some extent by showing non-prefered terms and
semantic relations. Other ways of guiding people
in using a thesaurus include introductory matter
and scope notes.
A scope note often takes the form of a definition
of the term.
• Rule for Synthesis
Usually, a thesaurus list all its prefered terms explicitly.
Such thesauri are enumerative.
Some thesauri indicate some prefered terms indirectly:
instead of listing all the prefered terms, they give rules
for creating them out components.
Such thesauri are at least partly synthetic.
COLLECTING TERMS

Thesaurus construction requires collecting a set of terms.

Some of these will becoming prefered terms and others
may not appear in the thesaurus at all in their original
form, but they may suggest concepts that need to be
covered in some way.
SOURCES OF TERMS

Sources from which terms can be collected include:

- existing list of terms: other thesauri, indexes,
dictionaries, glossaries, etc.
- texts from which terms can be extracted: titles, abstracts, or
full texts of indexed items and queries by patrons.
- People: subject specialists, etc.
 WHAT KIND OF TERMS SHOULD
YOU COLLECT?
Where possible, terms in a thesaurus
should be nouns or noun phrases.

A term should be general enough

that it might be used to index a
number of items. For example,
thesaurus usually does not include proper
names.
MODIFYING AND INVENTING
TERMS

Standardizing the Form of Words

Terms collected should already
be nouns or noun phrases. Here
some further guidelines for the
form that terms should take in
your final thesaurus.
Guidelines: Examples:

Plural for things “TUBES”

that can be
counted

Singular for “WOOD”

“mass” nouns

Singular for “REFRIGERATION”

processes, “WEIGHT”
properties, and “POVERTY”
Conditions
“RADAR ANTENNAS”
Not inverted (rather than “ANTENNAS,
RADAR”
Guidelines: Examples:

Excluding “CARBOHYDRATE
Prepositions METABOLISM”
(rather than
“METABOLISM OF
CARBOHYDRATES”)

Excluding punctuation “COOPERATIVE PROGRAMS”

(rather than “CO-OPERATIVE
mark, diacritics, PROGRAMS)
Special character, “MUSICAL NOTES” (rather than
And abbreviations “(MUSICAL) NOTES” or
“MUS. NOTES”
WHAT TO DO WITH TERMS
WITH MORE THAN ONE
MEANING
A homograph is an expression
that has the same spelling as
another expression, but a
different meaning. A thesaurus
needs to distinguish between
homographs.
A unique term may be created out
of a homograph by adding a
parenthetical qualifier; for
example, “PORT (WINE)”.
You may note that including
parentheses is contrary to the
guideline given above; namely, to
avoid puntuation. A unique term
may also be created out of a
homograph by adding another word
without punctuation; for example,
“PORT WINE”.
 INTRODUCING NEW TERMS
In addition to term extracted
from your various sources, you
may sometimes choose to
introduce new terms of your own.
For example, 1. broad consept terms
2. structural terms
3. terms for nontextual
material
BROAD CONCEPT TERMS

Terms that represent broad

concepts may be introduced
because they are useful in broad
searches.
For example, “TRAFFIC STATION”
because it can be used to replace
a search for “AIRPORTS OR BUS
TERMINALS OR TRAIN STATIONS OR
HELIPORTS OR …….”
STRUCTURAL TERMS

Terms may also be introduced

because they help to clarity the
structure of semantic relations.
For example, “EMPLOYMENT OF
SPECIFIC GROUPS” to clarify the
relation between “EMPLOYMENT”
and “YOUTH EMPLOYMENT”.
TERMS FOR NONTEXTUAL
MATERIAL
If you are constructing a thesaurus
for indexing material which is not in
the form of text, you have fewer
sources for terms. You may
therefore find yourself inventing
your own terms more.
For example, this picture shows things
that are referred to in the caption,
including a bottle. After examining
the picture, you might decide to add “BOTTLES” to your list of terms.
 PREFERRED TERMS AND NON-
PREFERRED TERMS
Equivalent terms
After collecting terms for your
thesaurus, you need to decide
which are equivalent terms. For
purposes of indexing and searching,
a set of equivalent terms will all be
Treated as though they meant the
Same thing will be represented by a
Single preferred term.
Spelling and Synonyms
Sometimes, equivalent terms
really do mean the same thing. So, it
obviously makes sense to use a single
preferred term to represent that one
meaning.
1. A word may have more than one spelling, for example,
“AESTHETIC” and “ESTHETIC”.
2. Two different words may have essentially the same meanin
for example, “AUTOMATION” and “MECHANIZATION
Quasy-Synonyms
Sometimes, equivalent terms
mean different things in ordinary
language. For indexing and
retrieval, it is better to group the
different meaning together. Such
equivalent term are called quasi-
synonyms.
Types of quasi-synonyms

Terms with overlapping meanings

are sometimes treated as
equivalent. For example,
“GENIUSES” and “PRODIGIES”
might be treated as equivalent,
even though the two terms mean
different things.
A term whose scope is included in that of another term
is sometimes treated as equivalent. For example,
“STEEL” might be treated as equivalent to “METAL”.
If it is not important to distinguish items on steel from
items on other metals.

Sometimes opposites are treated as equivalent, because

items on one are likely to be relevant to a query for the
other. For example, “TRANSPARENCY” might be
treated as equivalent to “OPACITY”.
Preferred Terms
Preferred terms serve as focal points where all the information about a
concept is collected.

Non-preferred Terms
Non-preferred terms are include in a thesaurus mainly to help users
find the appropriate preferred terms. Non-preferred terms may also
help to define the scope of preferred terms.
USE/UF
A non-preferred term is normally linked to a corresponding preferred
term by a USE reference. The corresponding reference in the opposite
direction if UF (“Used For”).
For example,

PERIODICALS SERIALS
USE SERIALS UF PERIODICALS
CHOOSING PREFERRED TERMS

The following are some principles for choosing preferred

terms, together with examples of applying them.

Guidelines Examples
Usage COOKING UF COOKERY
(“Cooking” is the more
commonly used word.)
Breadth PLASTICS
UF POLYETHYLENE

DISAMBIGUATION AMERICAN LIBRARY

COMPOUND USE REFERENCES
Instead of a single non-preferred term,
one may sometimes instruct indexers
and serchers to use more than one
preferred term in combination. In such
cases, the USE reference points to all
the preferred terms, and the UF
reference is often marked in some
special way.
FOR EXAMPLE,
SNOWMOBILES
USE VEHICLES+SNOW
SNOW
UF+SNOWMOBILES
VEHICLES
UF+SNOWMOBILES

You are especially likely to do this if

The non-preferred term consists of
more than one word.
FOR EXAMPLE,
SCHOOL CAFETERIAS
USE CAFETERIAS+SCHOOLS
CAFETERIAS
UF+SCHOOL CAFETERIAS
SCHOOLS
UF+SCHOOL CAFETERIAS

On the other hand, you may choose not

to make such a term a non-preferred
term, even if it consist of more than one
word.
 MAKING MULTI-WORD TERMS
PREFERREDQ1
When should you allow a multi-word as a preferred term?
A term consisting of more than one word should typically be made a
preferred term if:
1.Combining terms is not possible either at the indexing stage or at the
searching stage.
2. Too many terms would otherwise be required to index an item
3. The resulting number of preferred terms is not too large
4. Indexing and searching are generally easier using the compound term
5. The term is likely to be used frequently in indexing or searching
6. The term’s components occur frequently in different syntactic
relations, for example, “LIBRARY SCHOOL”, “SCHOOL
LIBRARIES”.
7.The term is needed in the structure of
semantic relations; especially, if any
narrower concepts are represented by
preferred terms.

8. You are in doubt

 SEMANTIC RELATIONS
Why indicate Semantic Relations?
Indicating semantic relations helps in several aspects of information
management.
1. Checking whether a term should be used in indexing a given item or in
formalating a given search specification
2. Choosing the correct