Controlled Vocabulary

A controlled vocabulary is a terminology composed of controlled terms and their word sense definitions intended to facilitate shared communication within some expertise domain.

• AKA: Structured Terminology.
• Context:
  • It can be the output of a Controlled Vocabulary Design Task.
  • It can range from being a Controlled Natural Vocabulary to being a Controlled Synthetic Vocabulary.
  • It can be a part of a Controlled Language.
  • It can (typically) used to describe a Domain, with the establishment of Semantic Relations among Concepts.
  • It can assist with Testing and Validation of Definitions.
• Example(s):
  • a Terminological Dictionary.
  • a Technical Term Set, such as a Glossary.
  • a Thesaurus.
  • an Lexicalized Ontology such as the Gene Ontology Database.
  • AGROVOC, http://www.fao.org/agrovoc/ AGROVOC is a multilingual, structured and controlled vocabulary designed to cover the terminology of all subject fields in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and related domains
  • e.g. in Art and Architecture, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/
  • Rabbit Controlled Vocabulary.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Machine-Processable Ontology (that is not human processable).
  • a Document.
  • a Subject Heading List.
• See: Controlled Vocabulary Qualifier, Z39.19, Word Form Set, Subject Indexing, Knowledge Organization System, Nomenclature, Pattern Language.

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References

2014

• (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/controlled_vocabulary Retrieved:2014-2-18.
  • Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other forms of knowledge organization systems. Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the use of predefined, authorised terms that have been preselected by the designer of the vocabulary, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, where there is no restriction on the vocabulary.

2009a

• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/controlled_vocabulary#Noun
  • (information science) A carefully selected set of terms - words and phrases - such that each concept from the domain of discourse is described using only one term in the set and each term in the set describes only one concept.

2009b

• (Ménard, 2009) ⇒ Elaine Ménard. (2009). “Ordinary Image Retrieval in a multilingual context: a comparison of two indexing vocabularies.” In: Proceedings of ISKO UK 2009 Conference.
  • In general, controlled vocabularies facilitate the indexing process and offer many advantages for retrieval, browsing and interoperability. Nevertheless, controlled vocabularies also present some weaknesses, the main one being that they often represent concepts in an artificial manner. Indeed, the indexing terms offered by controlled vocabularies generally have few linkages with the terms commonly used by the image searcher (Furnas et al., 1987). Another disadvantage of controlled vocabularies is that they quickly become obsolete and neologisms take a long time to enter controlled vocabularies. Finally, not only is the use of these vocabularies a complex task for most indexers, the most commonly used controlled vocabularies for indexing images are available only in English. Therefore, an indexer with little knowledge of English who wishes to use these vocabularies will face a significant language problem unless an effective translation mechanism is provided.

2009c

• (Zhu et al., 2009) ⇒ Xinxin Zhu, Jung-Wei Fan, David M Baorto, Chunhua Weng, and James J Cimino. (2009). “A Review of Auditing Methods Applied to the Content of Controlled Biomedical Terminologies.” In: Journal of biomedical informatics, 42(3). ** QUOTE: The quality of a controlled terminology can be characterized from any of several different perspectives. The design of a terminology can, from the outset, determine much about the future capabilities of the terminology. Many aspects of terminology design have been identified and characterized as desirable or undesirable [1] and [2].

2008a

• (Dextre Clarke et al., 2008) ⇒ Stella Dextre Clarke, Alan Gilchrist, Ron Davies and Leonard Will. (2008). “Glossary of Terms Relating to Thesauri and Other Forms of Structured Vocabulary for Information Retrieval." Willpower Information
  • controlled vocabulary
    • prescribed list of terms or headings each one having an assigned meaning
    • Controlled vocabularies are designed for use in classifying or indexing documents and for searching them. They normally contain a unique preferred term for each concept or entity with links to that term from non-preferred terms. They may also show relationships between terms.

2008b

• (Melli & McQuinn, 2008) ⇒ Gabor Melli, and Jerre McQuinn. (2008). “Requirements Specification Using Fact-Oriented Modeling: A Case Study and Generalization.” In: Proceedings of Workshop on Object-Role Modeling (ORM 2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88875-8_98

2005a

• (Woodley, 2005b) ⇒ Mary S. Woodley, Gail Clement, and Pete Winn. (2005). “DCMI Glossary." Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.
  • QUOTE: controlled vocabulary: A prescribed set of consistently used and carefully defined terms.

2005b

• (ANSI Z39.19, 2005) ⇒ ANSI. (2005). “ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies." ANSI.
  • QUOTE: controlled vocabulary: A list of terms that have been enumerated explicitly. The list is controlled by and is available from a controlled vocabulary registration authority. All terms in a controlled vocabulary must have an unambiguous, non-redundant definition. At a minimum, the following two rules must be enforced: 1) If the same term is commonly used to mean different concepts, then its name is explicitly qualified to resolve this ambiguity. 2) If multiple terms are used to mean the same thing, on of the terms is identified as the preferred term in the controlled vocabulary and the other terms are listed as synonyms or aliases. The primary purpose of vocabulary control is to achieve consistency in the description of content objects and to facilitate retrieval. Vocabulary control is accomplished by three principal methods: defining the meaning of terms; using the equivalence relationship to link synonymous terms; and distinguishing among homographs.
    • NOTE: This is a design goal that may not be true in practice; it depends on how strict the controlled vocabulary registration authority is regarding registration of terms into a controlled vocabulary. At a minimum, the following two rules must be enforced:
    • 1. If the same term is commonly used to mean different concepts, then its name is explicitly qualified to resolve this ambiguity. NOTE: This rule does not apply to synonym rings.
    • 2. If multiple terms are used to mean the same thing, one of the terms is identified as the preferred term in the controlled vocabulary and the other terms are listed as synonyms or aliases.

1990

• (Carasik et al., 1990) ⇒ R. P. Carasik, S. M. Johnson, D. A. Patterson, and G. A. Von Glahn. (1990). “Domain Description Grammar: Application of linguistic semantics.” In: ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering, 15(5).

1986

• (ISO 2788, 1986)International Standards Organization. (1986). “Documentation - Guidelines for the Establishment and Development of Monolingual Thesauri, 2nd ed." ISO 2788:1986.
  • QUOTE: … term is the representation of a concept, preferably in the form of a noun or a noun phrase.

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