This draft thesaurus of terminology is being developed for the USGS Gateway to the Earth Project, under the direction of the USGS Standardized Lexicon and Tagging Team (chaired by Karen Kaye). The structure and the terminology will develop through time and a process of continual review.

Currently the thesaurus contains 679 terms, of which 563 are valid descriptors and 116 are invalid terms that provide links to the valid descriptors. Definitions (scope notes) have not yet been added for the terminology. The terminology is organized into 9 facets: disciplines, feature types, format, methods, object types, temporal coverage, topics, user services, and USGS program and policy descriptions.

There are several ways to view the terminology:

1. Click on one of the letters above to begin exploring the terminology, starting with a word or phrase that represents an interest of yours. You can continue by following the links between terms.
2. Look at the hierarchical view. This shows the overall hierarchy of valid terms; indentation shows that broader term/narrow term placement of the terms.
3. Look at the complete alphabetical listing of all terms, both valid and invalid. Each entry shows all of the relationships of that particular term.

How to read thesaurus entries: here is a sample full record.

maps

UF: cartographic products
BT: object types
NT: geologic maps
NT: topographic and base maps
RT: cartography

This means that "maps" is the term for a category. This term can be used to label an information resource; it can be assigned as a "subject" for a web page, a product, a publication, etc. It can be listed on an interface for selection by a user looking for information - when a user selects this topic category, she/he will get a listing of all information resources that are about (or related to) this topic. If a user searches instead for "cartographic products", she/he will be referred to (or linked) to this category also (UF stands for "Used For"). The immediate broader term for this category in this case is "object types" which is a facet at the top of the thesaurus and would not be directly searched.* This is one of a set of terms with the broad term "object types". There are two narrower categories of this concept: "geologic maps" and "topographic and base maps". Users who search for "maps" will also retrieve items labelled with these narrower terms, but they also have the option of limiting their searches to one of the narrower topics. There is also a related concept in the thesaurus: "cartography". The searcher and the cataloger are both made aware of this related term through the reciprocal Related Term link (RT).

* Top terms are treated as facets in this draft thesaurus. Broader terms that are not facets are valid terms for indexing and searching.

Please return to the Main Page for this terminology project for related information.

Send your comments to: Linda Hill

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