Suitability for the
Environment
At present, the Beer
Snoob Thesaurus
contains terms in five primary areas of interest to users: appearance,
flavours
and aromas, ingredients, mouthfeel and styles. Over half of the terms
in the
initial version of the thesaurus relate to beer styles because they are
more
accessible to fledgling snobs than the less tangible terms related to
flavours
and aromas and mouthfeel. As well, most Beer Snoobs tend to search for
beer reviews
using style. In
later versions of the
thesaurus, terms will be added, including many from the
difficult-to-describe categories flavours and aromas and
mouthfeel. Essentially, the thesaurus itself
will
develop in response to the needs of its increasingly sophisticated
(and, of
course, snobbish) users.
All members may
assist with this project by
contributing reviews and entering basic data into the database.
Currently, all
indexing is done by trained librarians who are also committed snoobs.
As mentioned in the About section, in the future some members may be
taught how to index by Beer Snoob librarians or, more likely, indexing
internships will be offered to local library school students.
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Type
of Indexing Language
The Beer Snoob
Thesaurus is a controlled
vocabulary constructed after reviewing the terminology and indexing
languages used
by sources on the subject. It follows the ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and
Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies. (Note:
Parenthetical
references appearing below direct the reader to a specific section in
these
guidelines.) As such, the thesaurus does not make use of natural
language.
However, users will be able to search the online database using natural
language in the form of keywords.
Each single-word and
multi-word term in the
thesaurus represents a single concept (6.3.1). When a single concept
could be
represented by more than one term, a preferred term was selected from
among
these terms based on literary warrant (8.2; 6.6.1.1).
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Post-coordinate
Retrieval
The thesaurus has
been designed to facilitate
post-coordinate retrieval, which allows users to employ
“Boolean and other
operators to express complex concepts” (7.2.2.1). The online
database will
allow for post-coordinate retrieval. For example, users may search for
reviews
of creamy stouts by combining the following indexed terms: creaminess
AND
stouts.
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Capitalization
In the literature,
some terms were found
equally as often with initial capitalization as they were entirely in
lowercase. Doppel bock, for
instance,
appears in the Oxford English Dictionary
as “Doppel bock” or “doppel
bock.” In such cases, the thesaurus uses the
lowercase form, following ANSI/NISO (2005) recommendation 6.7.1, which
states
that “predominantly lowercase characters [should] be used for
terms in
controlled vocabularies.” In agreement with recommendation
9.2.5, the thesaurus
serves as an orthographic authority and thus does not uniformly use
lowercase
initial letters. Where merited by the literature, initial
capitalization is
used.
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Pluralization
Some nouns in the
controlled vocabulary
follow the ANSI/NISO (2005) recommendations regarding nouns in a
straightforward way: count nouns such as “oats”
appear in the plural (6.5.1);
mass nouns such as “foam” appear in the singular
(6.5.2). However, the nouns
describing beer styles present a more complicated situation, partly due
to the
inevitable addition to the thesaurus of more terms. Here the creators
of the
thesaurus follow the ANSI/NISO (2005) recommendation that, given
user-warrant,
a class with more than one member be expressed as a plural (6.5.2).
Thus
“stouts,” which beer snobs regularly break down
into subtypes such as “oatmeal
stout,” is expressed as a plural. “Oatmeal
stout,” on the other hand, does not
have related, snob-approved sub-types and so is expressed as a singular
noun.
Nouns describing style were analyzed in this way: even if a term for a
beer
style is the narrowest in a hierarchy as the thesaurus currently
describes it,
it may appear in the plural because the thesaurus could conceivably be
expanded
to include sub-types of that beer style, if those styles later showed
user
warrant. One example of this latter scenario is “Scotch
ales,” which appears in
the plural in case the thesaurus ever needs to be revised for more
specificity
in this area.
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Grammatical
Forms of Terms
As suggested by
ANSI/NISO (2005), terms
throughout the thesaurus appear in the form of nouns and noun phrases
(6.4.1). For
commonly used terms in grammatical forms other than nouns or noun
phrases
(e.g., acidic and cloudy)
these terms were included in the
thesaurus as non-preferred terms; these terms direct users to preferred
terms (e.g., acidity and cloudiness). As the thesaurus develops,
more non-nouns and non-noun
phrases (in particular, more adjectives related to appearance, flavours
and
aromas, and mouthfeel) will be added as non-preferred terms in order to
direct
users to preferred terms.
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Relationship
Structures
The thesaurus denotes
three types of
semantic relationships: equivalence, hierarchical, and associative.
Equivalence
Relationships
Two or more terms
expressing the same
concept have an equivalence relationship (8.2). In such instances, one
of these
terms has been chosen as the preferred term, with equivalent terms
appearing in
the thesaurus as non-preferred terms (8.2). Users encountering a
non-preferred
term will be directed to its preferred term (e.g., collar
USE: head).
As
previously mentioned, the preferred terms were selected based on
literary
warrant (6.6.1.1). Common equivalence relationships include synonymy
(e.g., special bitter / best bitter) and lexical variation (e.g.,
Pilsners / Pilseners).
Over time, more equivalent terms will be included in the thesaurus as
non-preferred terms due to an abundance of extant synonyms and lexical
variants.
Hierarchical
Relationships
Hierarchical
relationships indicate superordinate
and subordinate connections between terms. A superordinate (parent)
term is a
broader term, namely a class or a whole, and subordinate (child) terms
are
narrower terms, which represent the members or parts of that class or
whole
(8.3). For example, cream ales (NT)
are types of lager ales (BT).
Associative
Relationships
Terms with an
associative relationship lack
equivalence or hierarchical relationships but are semantically or
conceptually
related (8.4). Related terms (RTs) were determined on the basis of
their value
to users and/or indexers. For example, if the extent of the
relationship between
two terms is simply that both are ingredients (e.g., water
and wheat), this
relationship would be of little value to users and indexers; therefore,
these
terms would not be represented as having an associative relationship.
On the
other hand, it is often valuable to identify relationships between
terms which
would otherwise remain concealed, such as the relationship between hops (an ingredient) and hoppiness
(a flavour/aroma). These terms
are clearly related; however, they appear in different hierarchies,
meaning
that the only relationship they can be given is associative. Likewise,
the
relationship between antonyms (e.g., thinness
/ fullness) may be usefully
represented as associative. As a result, users looking up thinness in the thesaurus
will
be reminded that it is related to fullness. In
this thesaurus, associative
relationships have been identified when they
were deemed valuable for users and/or indexers.
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Precision
Precision, the number
of relevant items
retrieved out of the total number of documents retrieved, is served in
several
ways. First, the thesaurus is designed primarily for post-coordinate
retrieval.
Post-coordination will allow users to narrow their searches through the
addition of terms using the Boolean operator “AND.”
Secondly, the thesaurus
employs scope notes to clarify the prescribed meaning of terms within
the
indexing language. Assuming indexers conform to this vocabulary control
when
indexing the club’s review collection, the collection will be
searchable with a
high degree of precision. Thirdly, the thesaurus carefully constructs
relationships between terms according to the warrant of a broad survey
of the
literature. Hierarchical relationships in particular enhance precision
by
leading searchers to narrower terms. The thesaurus authors’
careful and
economical identification of associative relationships also increases
precision
by suggesting overlapping terms while at the same time not leading
users to
unduly broad searches. Finally, the specificity of the language (which
should
increase as terms are added in the future) guarantees high-precision
searching.
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Recall
Recall, the number of
relevant documents
retrieved out of the total number of relevant documents in the
collection, is
also enhanced in a few different ways. First, control of word forms
such as
singular and plural reduces the chances that items will be missed due
to noun
form (such as singular and plural). Secondly, control of synonyms and
quasi-synonyms, such as lexical equivalences and European vs. North
American
terms, reduces the chances of missed documents. Thirdly, structural
syndetic
relationships strengthen recall by leading searchers to broader terms
and by
suggesting related terms that could be used to expand a search using
the
Boolean operator “OR.” Fourthly, and more
specifically to the domain of beer
reviewing, recall is improved by the combination of terms for flavour
and aroma
into one hierarchy. Because these terms are generally the same, and the
two
aspects of beer are almost always discussed together, it made sense to
combine
them in this way, thus slightly increasing recall.
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Specificity
The specificity of
the Beer Snoob indexing
language—its ability to point to the details of a beer
review—was given careful
consideration by the authors. The thesaurus aims to provide a
controlled
vocabulary at a level of specificity suitable to the club. In this
initial
version, the thesaurus attains a high level of specificity in dealing
with the
major styles of beers discussed in North American beer literature. It
also
provides a few key terms related to ingredients as well as the less
tangible
areas of mouthfeel, appearance, and flavours and aromas.
Further care for the
appropriate level of
specificity is evident is in the choice of node labels. To enhance the
clarity
of certain hierarchies, non-indexable terms describe the top of the
hierarchy.
For example, “flavours and aromas” is a node label,
rather than an indexing
term, because practically all beer reviews discuss the flavour and
aroma of
beers, but the term is useful for showing the principle of organization
in the
hierarchy. “Mouthfeel,” on the other hand, while
commonly discussed, is by no
means a required consideration in every beer review; it therefore
provides a
useful, if broad, indexing term, not just an indicator of hierarchical
structure.
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Exhaustivity
The most exhaustive
aspect of the thesaurus
is that dealing with beer styles, which stops short of brand names and
individual labels. On the other hand, this vocabulary is not wholly
exhaustive,
since in some cases more specific sub-categories of beers may
conceivably
appear (either as types discussed more extensively than at
present—providing
literary warrant for their inclusion in the thesaurus—or as
new types
entirely). For further discussion, see the section on singular and
plural noun
forms.
Terminology for
ingredients, appearance,
mouthfeel, and flavours and aromas represents the most basic
terminology used
in beer-reviewing. Users can expect this vocabulary to be further
developed in
future iterations of the thesaurus.
Additional classes of
terms may also appear
in future versions: for example fermentation processes, bottling, and
drinking
occasions. These terms have been excluded in the present version due to
its
scope as a first foray into organizing the Beer Snoob review collection.
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Relative
Weight of Aboutness and Meaning
At present, The B.S.
Thesaurus is primarily
a controlled vocabulary for describing the aboutness of beer reviews in
the
B.S. Collection. The thesaurus has the most depth in describing and
relating
reviews in terms of the beer styles under review. With a search and
retrieval
system, the controlled vocabulary will allow snoobs to collocate
reviews of
beers based on the objective criteria of style, even if the reviews
themselves
vary slightly in spelling or usage of these terms. Terms for flavour
and aroma,
as well as appearance, are also generally aboutness terms; however, as
the
collection grows and the indexing project goes further, this and other
areas of
the thesaurus should be developed to accommodate more personalized
searching
objectives. For the time being, however, through its emphasis on
aboutness, the
thesaurus is helpful to aspiring beer connoisseurs who will most likely
want to
begin reading up on recently reviewed beers according to style, thus
allowing them
to order or buy these beers with a minimum of uncertainty and
embarrassment.
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