About the Thesaurus

There is much to learn about creating a specialized thesaurus from this interview with Daphne Worsham - The Thesaurus Challenge - done by Cybele Elaine Werts. This was published in the March 2008 issue of the SLA magazine, Information Outlook.

Daphne Worsham has lots of experience from her work to create a special eduction thesaurus for the Western Regional Resources Center in Eugene, Oregon.

The interview covered the main questions in people's minds - value of the thesaurus, what is controlled vocabulary, the process for building a thesaurus and amount of time needed, and the problems with user generated tagging.

One eye-opening remark on the importance of a thesaurus came from a discussion of regional differences in language. Worsham gave this example: "I learned when I worked in a restaurant, that if you order a regular coffee in certain parts of the country, that automatically means to put cream in it. If you order a regular on the West Coast, it means black. So if we use "regular" to tag something as an identified, it wouldn't mean the same thing to everyone." This one example show the importance of "clarity in language".