Thesaurus as a source of normalized branch scientific vocabulary

The results of scientific work for updating of the polythematic Information and Search Thesaurus on Agriculture and Foods (IST) developed in the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution «Central Scientific Agricultural Library» (FSNSI CSAL) are presented. The work is carried out to accurately represent the content of documents in the process of indexing, providing the unified data presentation, adequately describing subject domains and increasing the searching possibilities of the thesaurus. The main functions of the IST, which is a complex terminological system with different kinds of semantic relationships between its elements (lexical units (LU)), are considered. The role of the IST as a branch reference of scientific vocabulary is particularly noted. During the investigation the IST content has been essentially enriched with new lexis in the following subject domains: plant protection, zoology, microbiology, botany, forest husbandry, agronomy The result of the research work on updating is a new version of the IST containing 62682 LU. More than 27 600 LU are scientific (Latin) names of organisms (of which 1 782 are new). In total, nearly 2 700 LU have been corrected (added, changed, deleted). More than 2 800 links between terms (hierarchic, synonymic and associative) have been added. The updated version of the thesaurus, which includes new terminology, enables adequate description of the subject areas, accurate disclosure of the content of a document during its scientific processing. It is an effective tool for indexing and thematic search. The creation and development of IST of the FSNSI CSAL is in line with the current level of thesaurus development. The scope of the IST, the development of its vocabulary items and the semantic relationships of the terms represented in it make it possible to describe the subject areas related to agriculture, the food industry and related disciplines quite comprehensively. 

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