Authority Thesaurus Wizard

Thesauri are files of all established and unestablished headings in the authority record database. A thesaurus establishes the full relationships between many headings. Authority thesauri are used to provide cross-references while searching and browsing the e-Library. The Authority Thesaurus policy defines which thesauri will be available on the system. It is also used in the display of cross-references. There are two types of authority thesauri, Thesaurus and Synonym List.

From the List Policies window, you can create, display, modify, copy, or remove the Authority Thesaurus policies. Click Close to exit the wizard.

The following Authority Thesaurus policies are included in the SirsiDynix Symphony delivery.

Attributes

The Authority Thesaurus includes the following attributes.

Name

The Authority Thesaurus Name attribute is a unique name that identifies the content of the policy. This name is ten characters or less, and may not include spaces or punctuation, except for dash (-), underscore (_), and dollar sign ($). Additionally, the pipe character (|) may not be used.

Description

The Description attribute provides more information about the use of the Authority Thesaurus policy. The description may be up to 60 characters in length. Although this attribute may contain spaces and punctuation, the pipe character (|) cannot be used.

Type

An Authority Thesaurus policy either represents a single authority thesaurus (Thesaurus) or a list of thesauri grouped as synonyms (Synonyms). Click either Thesaurus or Synonyms. By default, the Authority Thesaurus policy has three single thesauri and two synonyms.

For example, although there may be two separate thesauri listed as available for use, both may use the same thesaurus file. Uniform titles and series could both use the same thesaurus file, which would be established in the Authority Thesaurus policy as a single thesaurus TITLES with the synonym type policy SERIES.

Internal Name

The Internal Name attribute is the name used by the system to identify an internal BRS thesaurus. The Internal Name attribute is not applicable for Synonym List Authority Thesaurus policies.

Important: BRS thesaurus files are configured by SirsiDynix at delivery, and new ones may only be added by SirsiDynix Customer Support. As delivered, SirsiDynix Symphony permits only the following values in this attribute: Name, Series, Subject, and NLMSH.

Synonyms

Synonym Lists include one or more Authority Thesauri of the type Thesaurus, and are used to establish a thesaurus that is, in effect, a combination of thesauri. Synonym lists include one or more Authority Thesauri policy names. This attribute is not applicable for Authority Thesaurus policies of the type Thesaurus. Use the Policy List gadget to select Authority Thesaurus (Thesaurus type) policies.

For example, to create a single thesaurus that includes authors, subjects, and title/series, add an Authority Thesaurus policy of the type Synonym List. This thesaurus, called GENERAL, would include the AUTHORS, TITLES, and SUBJECTS thesauri in the Synonyms attribute.

Authority Thesaurus and Cross References

The Authority Thesaurus policy does not appear in any SirsiDynix Symphony records; nor is it available as a field on a WorkFlows window. Instead, the Authority Thesaurus policy interacts with the Format policy and Gateway policies to determine which cross-references appear while searching and browsing the catalog. When an authority record is loaded, proper and improper terms are loaded in thesauri according to attributes in the Format policy used by the record. For each type of search, the Gateway policies specify a thesaurus to use for searching for cross-references.

The authority thesaurus is maintained by the Add, Delete, Update Databases report.

Related topics 

Authority Configuration Wizards

Policy List Gadget

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