User Guide: Community Information Thesaurus
When people ask for help, they can do this in a number of different ways. The terminology used when looking for help varied between professional groups and different members of the public. In order to compensate for the differences between the way people ask for help, we have built up a Thesaurus facility which contains a list of commonly used words with direct links to indexes used in the database, as well as a number of links to other subjects which may be of interest. The Thesaurus is not openly visible to users, with most terms used being kept behind the scenes to avoid cluttering the screens with many different options. Indeed, you may use the database regularly, and never really know the subject AKA's are even there as they have been built to seamlessly direct users to the correct term.
To help you understand how the database actually works, there follows a list of the different components of the Thesaurus which currently exist and which we intend to develop further in the future.
- Subject Hierarchy - is a family-tree style listing of grouped subjects. There are currently over 530 subject indexes being used in the database. When we are adding new organisations to the database or amending details, we will tag each organisation with the most relevant subjects according to what services they provide, who they mainly provide these services for and the type of organisation they are.
- Subject AKAs - this is a listing of synonyms for terms used in the main subject index. Should someone type in a word which is not an actual index used in the database, then the database shall look through the list of synonyms to see if there is a match there, and then direct the user to the corresponding term in the database. An example here would be when a user types in Wheely Bin (which is not the name of a main index in the database), they will get directed to the Refuse Collection subject. NOTE: this list has been built up over time. Administrators of the system will be greatly helped by the facility to track the questions being asked of the database on the web, to ensure that all relevant synonyms are included. This system also offers great potential for developing information which would be relevant to speakers of different community languages - something we shall investigate once the first stage of development has been completed.
- Organisation AKA's - we've also added in a list of AKA's or other names for organisations contained in the Community Directory. This list includes all abbreviations (e.g. HCVS for Hackney Council for Voluntary Services) as well as any other commonly used names or previous names of an organisation (e.g. Law and Democratic Services is now part of the Customer and Corporate Directorate within the London Borough of Hackney).
Suggestions please
We would be grateful to hear users views on the thesaurus element of the Community Directory. Please use the feedback form if you have any comments on this or indeed any part of the Community Directory.
Page updated: 14 Feb 2008