Why use the InterWATER thesaurus?

Thesaurus comes from the Latin word thesauros, meaning treasure.

The Oxford Concise Dictionary (seventh edition) gives two explanations for the term thesaurus: storehouse of information, especially dictionary or encyclopaedia; and secondly, list of concepts or words arranged according to sense (meaning), or chosen for use in indexing.

The InterWATER thesaurus guides you in what terms to use while searching or indexing information on water supply and sanitation. It is available in three languages: English, French and Spanish.

The InterWATER thesaurus can be used:

• For indexing information
• For searching or retrieving information
• As a translation tool

Indexing information

Indexing is the process of describing and identifying the content of a document. The process has two main stages:

1. Find out what the subject is and identify its component concepts or elements
2. Select preferred terms from the InterWATER thesaurus which represent those concepts

Read more: indexing step by step

Searching or retrieving information

Those who use the thesaurus only for retrieval purposes will be well advised to read the section on Indexing, because the indexer’s problems are those of the searcher in reverse.

• Use the thesaurus for retrieval to rationalise query information and to re-formulate the query in the light of the relevance of the material or of its volume.
• Use the structure built into the thesaurus to see, what other descriptors will be needed to retrieve information on an entire concept. (See Example - additional terms)
• Use the related terms (rts) the thesaurus provides, they may suggest relevant topics that were not immediately apparent. (See Example - related terms)
• Be aware of so-called ‘noise’ in the retrieval of information resulting from the false coordination of descriptors. (See Example - noise)

Using the thesaurus as a translation tool

If you have to index a Spanish or French language document and the agreement in your library is to use English indexing terms, the InterWATER Thesaurus provides you with the opportunity to check the term in the Spanish or the French version of the thesaurus to see what is the equivalent in English.

All descriptors in the English version of the Interwater thesaurus are followed by [ES] (Spanish) and [FR] (French); in the Spanish version, they are followed by [EN] (English) and [FR] (French); and in the French version, they are followed by [EN] (English) and [ES] (Spanish). E.g. wastage [ES] [FR]

How to use this function?

By putting the cursor on either [ES] or [FR] (DO NOT CLICK!!!!! on it), you will see perdidas de agua (Spanish) or gaspillage (French). If you like to see the translation of a Narrower Term, a Broader Term, or a Related Term, you will have to click on that term first and then proceed as explained above. If you do click on [ES] or [FR] you are transferred to the word block in the Spanish or the French thesaurus.