Problems of Thesaurus Construction

Abstract

The basic assumptions of the different methods of thesaurus construction are analyzed both from the epistemological point of view as well as from the information retrieval needs of the users. The construction of thesauri for social sciences becomes particularly difficult, because of the inherent ambiguity of the terms used in social sciences. Since the idea of a “growing thesaurus” is impracticable, it is suggested that an empirical study of the semantic differential of different sociological groups would suffice for the purpose of thesaurus construction.