Ben
Two of my colleagues, one in the Medical School, one in Nursing, are developing and populating a medical/nursing resource database for staff use, and with myself in the role of 'enabler' <cough> are intending to use controlled vocabs. There is, sadly, no one vocab that suits our needs, so we're looking to use the following in combination:
* Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), online at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html. Aimed at medical education, this is a bit too Americanised for our liking, using American English terms (eg "neonate" rather than "newborn") and spellings. In medical education, though, it appears to be the only game in town.
* RCN Thesaurus.This is a vocab put together by the Royal College of Nursing (http://www.rcn.org.uk/) but is currently only available as a printed or electronic Word doc for a small fee. Although not online like MeSH, the NMAP gateway, part of the larger BIOME gateway also run from Nottm Medical School (http://biome.ac.uk/), uses the main Thesaurus headings for indexing nursing resources (see(http://nmap.ac.uk/browse/)
The intention, at the moment, is to use both vocabs for indexing, together with any keywords the author wishes to add. So, for instance, if a staff member wants to add a presentation on, say, liver function to the database, s/he would be encouraged, when entering the record, to use MeSH and/or Thesaurus keywords, and also any informal keywords that would be of use locally. How this will work out in practice we'll just have to find out.
A colleague at UWE, working on NMAP, told me that "we have been building a list of UK terms (from the thesaurus) which need to be mapped to MeSH terms", but AFAIK this is very much work in progress.
I know this sounds like me being an ignoramus, but what's VDEX when it's at home? I'm relatively new to this metadata thingy, although I'm learning fast, honest ;-)
Cheers
Fred
Fred Riley
Learning Technologist
School of Nursing
University of Nottingham
Queen's Medical Centre
Nottingham
NG7 2HA
Tel: +44 (0)115 92 49924 ext 42356
Email: [log in to unmask]
>>> Ben Ryan <[log in to unmask]> 28/11/2003 15:27:32 >>>
All,
I am going to use VDEX but I don't think we have the resources to build the authority list/thesaurus.
Is anybody out there using an authority list/thesaurus, and if so which one(s).
Is there any work ongoing to create a spec/standard for UK metadata.
Regards,
Ben
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Dr Ben Ryan
HLSI Software Development Manager
University of Huddersfield
Tel: 01484 473587
E-mail: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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