Dear All

Sorry to have taken so long to send out the summary of the replies I received about thesauri and intranets.

Hope you find this useful.

Mandy

Summary of Replies

1. "We are also investigating a subject thesaurus. I came across one which
Cheshire and Merseyside STHA are using for their Intranet. The librarian who developed it is Kieran Lamb: [log in to unmask] 

The other suggestion we had was to use Dewey. The DH taxonomy is
probably too large but could be adapted. We are still grappling with
this one. "

2. "There is to be a single unified list of categories and keywords to describe information sources. The new local e-government standards body is funding a project to merge the Government Category list, Local Government category list and Seamless UK. It should be ready next Spring. "
The appropriate website link is <http://www.legsb.gov.uk/News> 
3. For non-clinical information, there's very little.  There is the DoH 
thesaurus but my view is that it only covers things from a top-level, 
policy-making perspective.  We've given up and are developing our own. 
4. I asked this question to the list earlier this year and got back quite a few replies from people saying they were looking for the same information and could I share any information I got. Unfortunately, apart from the DH thesaurus and Snomed (which I think is newly in use in the UK) no one came back with any help. A Scottish NHS evaluation of Snomed from last year ( <http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/files/SNOMED_evaluation_report.pdf> ) includes this paragraph: 
Participants identified many missing concepts and a smaller number of incorrect concepts. Areas of the terminology where gaps were anticipated, such as the Allied Health Professions, nursing and social care were confirmed to be areas in need of substantial continued development. Those in child health and acute specialties generally considered SNOMED CT to be an improvement on existing terminologies, but with room for some further enhancement. The GP reviewers identified fewer development needs.
This seems to be the problem with the thesauri available, that they do not cover healthcare across the board to include nursing, allied health, primary and secondary care, management etc. It may be though that an enhanced Snomed is a better way forward than having to start from scratch.
 

5. Thanks for your enquiry regarding the DH taxonomy. The taxonomy is based on the Department's thesaurus which is much larger
and used for the library database. It is available in hard copy from TSO for £90 or I could supply it on a CD ROM if required. However I suspect that the taxonomy will be enough for intranet use. [log in to unmask]



6. National Public Health Language may be an option http://www.nphl.nhs.uk/ nice web interface making it easy to use.  Guess the key question is who is going to be using it.  Small is better for non-librarians etc.  Big is better for accurate indexing.

 
7. We are at a very preliminary stage. Content management system purchased and all relevant people about to meet (Web dev team, FOI officers and myself and knowledge services manager) to look at metadata to underpin the intranet.
 
We are considering going down a hybrid route of merging thesauri. SOAP - which I know little about and HMIC/Mesh (WESSEX) may well be incorporated.
This seems a long way around and if anything has already been done on this it would be good to learn from that.
 


8. I understand that Snomed is used in this way, and will be used for Map of Medicine and the single search engine.  I am very keen to find out more about it - please can you let the list know what you find about this whole question.



Mandy Beaumont
Library Services Manager
Library and Information Service
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Royal Preston Hospital
Sharoe Green Lane
Fulwood
Preston
PR2 9HT

Tel: 01772 522763
E-mail: [log in to unmask] 
  
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