Using The ERIC Thesaurus
Maintaining the ERIC
Thesaurus
ERIC has an ongoing commitment to maintain the Thesaurus. In addition to
adding new Descriptors, ERIC may update the hierarchical relationships; modify the status of an existing
Descriptor if the term was seldom used, overlapped with other terms, or
became obsolete; update scope notes; etc.. These changes, generally based on literary warrant, are
considered routine maintenance, and are in accordance with standard
practices of thesaurus development and maintenance. These standards are
outlined and defined in
ANSI/NISO
Standard Z39.19-2005, Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and
Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies.
Examples:
Hierarchical Relationships:
Occasionally the hierarchy of terms (e.g., Broader, Narrower) needs adjustment.
For example, the record for the Descriptor "Context Effect" had identified "Influences"
as a Related term. The relationship was changed, making "Influences" a Broader term.
Overlapping Concepts:
Descriptors may need to be combined or expanded. For example, "Foster Care,"
"Foster Children," "Foster Families," and "Foster Parents"
are overlapping concepts; their use could fragment, rather than enhance, precision search
and recall. ERIC has combined these terms under "Foster Care" and recommends
using population group terms such as "Parents" and "Children" to narrow
the search to important populations. In another example, the term "Feedback" has
grown to mean not only a response mechanism but also an acoustical difficulty. ERIC has expanded
the main term to "Feedback (Response)" and created a synonym "Feedback (Acoustics)".
Scope Notes:
Review of the Thesaurus may identify older Descriptors that require the addition of a scope note
to provide clarity to its use, or to modify/update a term that already has a scope note. For example,
a scope note was added to the term "Architecture" indicating the term refers to
architectural structures, not information architecture.
Thesaurus Updates
User Feedback
ERIC is committed to serving the diverse educational community while
maintaining high database standards. We appreciate feedback from the
user community. Comments and suggestions may be submitted to
ericfeedback@csc.com .
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