Controlled Vocabularies Shelly Warwick MLS Ph D 2013

Controlled Vocabularies Shelly Warwick, MLS, Ph. D. 2013 – Permission is granted to reproduce and edit this work for non-commercial educational use as long as attribution is provided and the edited work is also available under the same terms of license.

After this Unit You should Be Able to • Define a “controlled vocabulary” • Understand the advantage(s) of using a controlled vocabulary in searching • Be able to state some examples of a controlled vocabulary

Controlled Vocabularies �Controlled vocabularies are lists of terms (a single word or a number of words) that can be used to describe individual items. �Used to Find concepts and subjects, not text �They are assigned by humans �Terms may be assigned that aren’t present as text in the individual items �Most databases that use a controlled vocabulary offer the option to limit a search to a subject field

Advantages of Controlled Vocabulary �Make sure like things are described using like terms �If You say heart attack and I say Myocardial Infarction Could lead to not finding items via a keyword search If the same term is assigned to each article no matter which term the author uses – and a searcher uses the assigned term – they will get a better search result

Examples of Controlled Vocabulary �Me. SH – Medical Subject Headings – used in Medline, Pub. Med, other health science database �UMLS – Unified Medical Language System –developed by the NIH – National Library of Medicine to integrate and distribute key terminology, classification and coding standards