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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 52| August 2001
APAIS Thesaurus on the Web
The APAIS thesaurus lists the subject terms used to index articles for APAIS: Australian Public Affairs Information Service, a subject guide to literature in the social sciences and humanities.
Many users of the APAIS thesaurus will be pleased to know it is now available on the Web for searching, browsing and downloading. While still primarily used as an indexing tool, the APAIS thesaurus is an essential aid for efficient online searching of the APAIS and Australian Public AffairsFull Text databases. Besides serving APAIS clients, the published Thesaurus has been adopted in a number of wider projects that require a structured list of Australian subject terms, such as the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) recommendation for its use for subject indexing in the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata standard for Commonwealth agencies that do not have agency-specific thesauri in place.
The thesaurus consists of browseable top-level terms with links to narrower terms in a terms reference structure. Non-preferred terms linked to top level terms are interfiled in this structure.
The thesaurus can be viewed at www.nla.gov.au/apais/thesaurus.
It can be downloaded in XML or tab-delimited format free of charge
provided it is for non-commercial use. Enquiries, comments or suggestions
about the web version of the APAIS thesaurus are welcome and may be
directed to apais@nla.gov.au
or to the APAIS Thesaurus Manager, National Library of Australia, Canberra
ACT 2600. Telephone: (02) 6262 1650.
Vera Dunn
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au