Glossary of terms for structured vocabulary

In some areas, it oftens seems that IT folk and information science folk have developed two languages for talking about the same methods. In an attempt to facilitate interdisciplinary communication, four consultants who specialize in the development and use of thesauri and other forms of structured vocabulary for information retrieval have put together a glossary of terms.

It seems that one of the major barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration is often different terminology — two different terms for the same thing or the same term used to mean different things. Nice to see an attempt to remedy this in the area of structured vocabularies.

Which reminds me, I’m still confused as to whether faceted classification and structuring data for parametric searching is the same thing. Seems like it to me, but maybe there’s a subtle difference. I just always remind myself when talking with search engine reps from companies like Verity, to talk about parametric search/browse instead of faceted classification. So, the two have become synonymous in my mind.

Update. Reading the entry for Parametric Searching is enlightening:

This type of search is for concepts that occur within one or more subfacets of a single facet, e.g. narrower terms of wine in a “materials” facet grouped under the node labels (wine by colour) and (wine by alcohol content). In some systems it is possible to search for a range of values rather than just for specific values.

It is to be distinguished from searches for compound concepts which may be made up of concepts from different facets, such as wine from a “materials” facet combined with red colour and alcohol content from a “properties” facet.

I think I get it.