Indexing Language
 

Indexing Language

The Addicted to Heroines (AH) Thesaurus conforms to the rules and standards set out in Guidelines for the Construction, Format and Management of Monolingual Thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19-1993). Any references to sections of this document are included in parenthesis when appropriate.
 

Suitability of Indexing Language

The thesaurus is the controlled vocabulary used for indexing the powers of female Marvel Superheroes. It has been constructed by, and for, members of the Association of Action Comic Book Writers (AACBW) who will be the primary users of the thesaurus. Literary warrant (3.0) served as the primary guiding principle in the construction of the Thesaurus. To select our preferred terms, we were guided by literary warrant in identifying the most frequently used terms for a given concept (3.6.1.1).
 

Pre-Coordinate Headings and Post-Coordinate Retrieval

The AH Thesaurus represents single concepts using either single word or multi-word descriptors (4.1.2.). There are no pre-coordinated headings included in the Thesaurus. To express complex subjects, the user will construct post-coordinated descriptors using Boolean (AND, OR or NOT) or other operators.
 

Relationship Structures

The major purpose of a thesaurus is to match the terms brought to the system by an enquirer with the terms used by the indexer. As in other subject thesauri, the terms in the Addicted to Heroines (AH) Thesaurus are linked together by three types of relationships:
 

• Equivalence relationships are used between synonyms or pairs of terms which are so nearly the same that they do not need to be distinguished in the context of a particular collection. Whenever there are alternative names for a type of item, we have to choose one to use for indexing (Preferred term), and provide an entry under each of the others saying what the preferred term is (Nonpreferred terms).  Non-preferred terms are indicated by the term USE. Preferred terms are indicated by the term UF (USED FOR).

Example:

enhanced senses

USE: ABNORMAL SENSITIVITY

• Hierarchical relationships, which link terms to other terms expressing more general and more specific concepts.

 
Broader term (BT): An authorized term which indicates the more general class to which a term belongs. Everything that is true of a term is also true of its broader term(s).
Example:

CLAWS

BT:   NATURAL WEAPONRY
 

Narrower term (NT): An authorized term which is narrower in scope and a member of the general class represented by the broader term under which it is listed. The reciprocal is BT. Example:

ANIMAL MIMICRY

NT:   SPIDER CLIMBING

• Associative relationships, which link terms to similar terms (related terms) where the relationship between the terms is non-hierarchical. Related terms are indicated by the prefix RT.  In accordance with thesaurus construction guidelines, however, related term references are never made to two terms at different levels in the same hierarchy.

SPIDER CLIMBING

RT:   WEB CASTING

Single Concepts

The controlled vocabulary of the AH Thesaurus expresses single concepts using single-word and multi-word descriptors (3.1). Our decision to use multi-word descriptors is based on literary warrant (4.1.3.a.); compound terms are used so frequently within the literature that it would not be advisable to split the term. In some instances, splitting the term would have lead to either ambiguity or a loss of meaning (4.2.a.).
Example:

IMMORTALITY (single-word descriptor)

MENTAL ENHANCEMENTS (multi-word descriptor)

Compound terms are always expressed in natural language order, never inverted.
Example:

NEURAL MANIPULATION

NOT:  MANIPULATION (NEURAL)

Hyphens

Due to problems in filing and searching, we have avoided using hyphens whenever possible (3.7.2.2.)
Example:

hyper-running

USE:  HYPER RUNNING

However, as per (3.7.2.2.) we have not omitted hyphens when it could lead to ambiguity in meaning.
Example:

SELF-ALTERATION

Scope notes

A thesaurus is not a dictionary, and it does not normally contain authoritative definitions of the terms that it lists. It could perfectly well do this, but a lot more work would be required to develop it in this way. Scope notes are used to distinguish between descriptors that have overlapping meanings in natural language, or to provide other advice on term usage to either the indexer or the searcher (3.2.2). Scope notes have not been used to indicate definitions.

Where there is any doubt about the meaning of a term a SCOPE NOTE (SN) is attached to it.
Example:

TRANSDUCTION

SN:   The power to transform any type of energy into another type of energy.

Spelling

Where variant spellings exist within our indexing language cross references have been provided between preferred and nonpreferred terms. Following rule 3.6.2.1.,  the principle of literary warrant directed which spelling of a term was adopted into the controlled vocabulary.
Example:

fairy magic

USE:  FAERIE MAGIC

As Marvel Comics is an American-based organization, indexing terms should adopt American spelling conventions to maintain consistency with the literature (3.6.2.2.), although at this time there are no examples from our thesaurus.  Example:

colour

USE : COLOR

Singular and Plural Forms

Plural forms have been applied where appropriate in keeping with the Standard (3.5.1 ) for Count Nouns.
Example:

DETECTION POWERS

NOT: DETECTION POWER

However, many AH Thesaurus terms reflect abstract concepts, which are expressed in the singular form (3.5.2.1.). Example:

ANIMAL MIMICRY

NOT: ANIMAL MIMICRIES

Proper Nouns

No proper nouns are included in the Thesaurus. Proper names will be included in a name authority file.
 

Recall and Precision

Recall refers to the number of relevant items present in the database that are retrieved in a search. In a database search, truncation symbols (either * or ?) can be used to capture relevant items but may return a higher proportion of unwanted references.

Precision is the number of relevant items retrieved to the total number of items retrieved in a search. We have designed the AH Thesaurus to be highly precise to reflect the specificity of the subject domain. The scope notes (SN) we have included also aid users in distinguishing preferred terms and increase precision in searching.
 

Specificity and Exhaustivity

This first Module of the AH Thesaurus is designed to reflect only the most defining and unique characteristics of the female Marvel superhero powers due to constraints of both time and funding. We recognize that many ‘smaller’ powers may have been ignored at this time, but we are confident that later Modules of the AH Thesaurus will feature an exhaustive list of all Marvel female superhero powers, and may be extended to other defining characteristics such as weapons, devices, and costumes, etc.
 

Thesaurus Maintenance

Someone has to be responsible for maintenance; members of the AACBW will continue to update the thesaurus as new powers are revealed or new characters are created, through the Thesaurus Committee.  The thesaurus will allow for the inclusion of new terms new and temporarily "forced" into the thesaurus by cataloguers, the committee will review these terms regularly and either accept them and build them into the thesaurus structure, or else decide that they are not appropriate for use as indexing terms. In that case they will be retained as non-preferred terms with USE references to the preferred terms, so that people who seek them will not be frustrated.

Keep in mind that a thesaurus requires three simple rules:
 

1. Use a limited list of indexing terms, but plenty of entry terms -- link these with USE and USE FOR (UF) relationships.
2. Structure terms of the same type into hierarchies -- link these with BROADER TERM/NARROWER TERM (BT/NT) relationships.
3. Remind users of other terms to consider--  link these with RELATED TERM/RELATED TERM (RT/RT) relationships.

K. Guest, T. Grundig, L. Little-Wolfe
LIBR 512
School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
The University of British Columbia