The Epicurean Cheese Shop Thesaurus
How to use the Thesaurus
The cheese thesaurus is organized alphabetically. Patrons may scan the entries for the desired quality or cheese characteristic within the in-house database of cheese.
Terminology
A concept may be represented in the thesaurus by several terms, only one of which can be used for searching. If a term is not to be used for searching (known as a "non-preferred term") it will be formatted in italics and followed by an indication of the preferred search term (shown in bold), as in the following example:
English cheeses
USE: British cheeses
A reciprocal entry is made under the preferred term indicating that it is to be "used for" (UF) the non-preferred term:
British cheeses
UF ("use for") English cheeses
In some cases, a Scope Note is included, to clarify the intended meaning of preferred terms:
If a preferred term has a close relationship with another preferred term, such as those referring to a common subject matter, and one of them is an example or instance of the other, more general term, the former term is subordinated to a broader term, as follows:<cheese flavour intensity>
SN A relative measure of the strength of the flavour and aroma characteristic of a cheese; it is usually closely related to the age or maturity of the cheese.
barnyardy
BT: ("broader term") <cheese flavours>
or to a narrower term, as follows
If terms are related more remotely, the relationship is indicated as follows:<Cheese flavours>
NT: ("narrower term") barnyardy
British cheeses
RT: ("related term") blue cheeses
Some terms are in <"angle"> brackets which indicate node terms which group related terms together but are not searchable. Preferred terms are in bold and non-preferred terms are in italics.
This thesaurus is based on the American National Standards Institute’s Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri (ANSI/NISO z39.19-1993).
Several other displays of the thesaurus terms are included in addition to the alphabetical display. These are included primarily for the benefit of the person(s) who will be doing the actual indexing of the cheese items.
The Top Term Display clearly demonstrates the multi-level hierarchical structure of the thesaurus and the main class terms under which narrower terms are classified.
The Hierarchical Display also quite graphically illustrates the multi-level hierarchical nature of the thesaurus. The indicators BT1, BT2, BT3 and stepped indentations show the levels of broader terms and, similarly, the indicators NT1, NT2 and NT3 show the reciprocal levels of narrower terms. A short sample only is included for illustrative purposes.
A sample page from the Rotated KWOC Display is also included. This display takes each word that is used in all of the thesaurus terms, lists it alphabetically and shows all the phrase terms in which it may be included. This is an example of taking each word out of the context in which it is used, hence it is known as the Key Word Out of Context or KWOC display.
A final sample is included of a Key Word in Context or KWIC Display. This display shows, alphabetically, each word that is used in the thesaurus, but keeps the word in the context of the phrase in which it may be used.