Controlled vocabulary

A controlled vocabulary is a collection of terms ( vocabulary) that are uniquely associated with concepts, so that no homonyms occur. In many cases, the reverse direction is true (each term only one or a preferred designation, that is, there are no synonyms).

Controlled vocabularies occur for example as a technical word lists or glossaries, in which terms are clearly defined. The term has a meaning, especially in the documentation science, where information is described by keywords ( indexing). Dating from a controlled vocabulary keyword is also called descriptor. The controlled Tags are managed in a thesaurus or authority file.

In particular, in the computer science identifiers to uniquely identify objects are used. Since the tagging of resources on the Internet does not happen controls, should be done in the semantic web using RDF URIs a semantic mapping to terms. Also, some types of reference books contain controlled vocabularies; so for example, must be decided whether an article about cars " car" you mean, " car " or " car ".

Examples

• The subject authority file is used to libraries in the German-speaking countries for content indexing.
• The EU uses IATE as a controlled vocabulary.
• The Medical Subject Headings are used for the bibliographic database Medline.