Hi Leonard,
I wondered when you'd show up ;-)

Attached is the schematic.

Phil

Phil Carlisle
Data Standards Supervisor
English Heritage
National Monuments Record Centre
Kemble Drive 
Swindon
SN2 2GZ
+44 (0)1793 414824
 
http://thesaurus.english-heritage.org.uk/
 

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-----Original Message-----
From: The Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leonard Will
Sent: 07 February 2007 12:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [FISH] His Dark Materials 2: The Subtle Difference

In message
<[log in to unmask]
> on Wed, 7 Feb 2007, "CARLISLE, Philip"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote
>Dear all
>
>Having cogitated, ruminated, pondered and, indeed, thought about this long
>and somewhat hard-ish. I have now come to the following conclusion.
>
>Materials are, by their very nature, organic (from plants and animals) or
>inorganic (from other stuff such as rocks and things).
>
"By their very nature" is an application of one of the general
principles of thesaurus construction, that BT/NT relationships should be
used only for true generic/specific or "kind of" relationships, with a
few specialised exceptions that do not apply here. The British Standard
for thesaurus construction, BS8723-2:2005, gives the accepted
"all-and-some test", viz:

    The relationship "parrots BT birds" is valid, because all parrots
    are birds, some birds are parrots.

    The relationship "parrots BT pets" is not valid, because only some
    parrots are pets, and some pets are parrots.

So it is valid to say that stone has the broader term "inorganic
material" because all stone is inorganic material.

It is not valid to say that stone has the broader term "building
material", because only some stone is building material.

Only materials that are exclusively used as building material should be
shown as narrower terms of that term. I would therefore suggest that the
materials facet of a thesaurus might contain relationships such as:

materials
    <materials by origin>
    inorganic material
        stone
           slate
           limestone
        clay
        mud
        brick

    organic material
        wood
        straw

    <materials by function>
    building material
        walling material
        roofing material
        flooring material

Related terms may not be shown in a hierarchical display such as this,
but it would certainly be possible to have relationships such as

walling material
RT  brick
    clay
    mud

which would meet the need for a reminder list of types of material that
could be used when indexing records dealing with walls.

The objects facet might have

objects
    <objects by form>
        bricks
        tiles
        slabs
        rods

and possibly

    <objects by function>
        building components
           bricks
           slates

depending on whether, within the scope of the thesaurus, bricks and
slates are exclusively defined as being building components. If not, you
might wish to have terms such as "walling components", "roofing
components", etc.

In the above I have used the distinction between singular and plural,
brick and bricks, to have distinct terms for the material and for
objects. The usual example of this is wood (material) and woods (areas
of woodland). Whether you add parenthetical qualifiers to reinforce the
distinction is optional, but the scope note of each term should make its
meaning clear.

To address another aspect of this discussion, I don't think that the
materials facet need distinguish between building materials and other
materials, though it can certainly be trimmed to eliminate materials
that are not within the scope of the thesaurus.

>I've attached a schematic for your perusal.

No you haven't   :-)

Leonard Will
-- 
Willpower Information       (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
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