Feasibility Study of Designing the family and Women’s Studies Thesaurus Using BS ISO 25964-1

Abstract

Research Objective: Feasibility study of the Family and Women’s Studies Thesaurus considering the expansion of information in the field of women and family studies, as well as the wide span of related vocabulary and the development of vocabulary lists and bibliographies, the Family and Women’s Studies Thesaurus can be a professional tool for indexing and retrieval of women’s information in databases, library collections, archives and documentation centers as well as the Internet. Using this thesaurus, an indexing system will be developed which can be used for indexing, storage and retrieval of family and women’s databases. Methodology: The research method used in this study is documentary-based and the data gathering method was through library search in printed and electronic resources as well as interviewing professionals in the field of family and Women’s Studies. Through building a concept network between the terms, first the main structure of the thesaurus was determined using the inductive method and then the detailed structure was developed. Using this concept network, terms of the field were determined in a specific system and their interrelations were clarified. Findings: By studying resources including books, theses and articles in the field of women and family studies, and using ISO 25964-1 standard, the following 13 major categories were determined for the Family and Women’s Studies Thesaurus : 1. Religion; 2. Health and Hygiene; 3. Politics; 4. Economics; 5.Social Sciences; 6. Education; 7. Psychology; 8. History; 9. Culture and Literature; 10. International Relations; 11. Law; 12. Science and Technology; 13. Sports. There exists a rich vocabulary pool in the above categories; in fact around 6000 terms were identified. Conclusion: Based upon the collected vocabulary and after building the references and scope notes, 243 keywords including 160 preferred terms, 124 related terms, 83 scope notes and 82 non-preferred terms were identified and entered into the Thesaurus Builder software. The alphabetical index, tree index, rotated index and the English-Persian index were developed as a model for the main thesaurus. As a result, the Family and Women’s Studies Thesaurus can be developed based upon the vocabulary and the model at hand