Enriching a thesaurus as a better question-answering tool and information retrieval aid

Abstract

This article reports the method of enriching a thesaurus by differentiating the related term relationship with specific semantic relations and expanding related terms. It also tests the usefulness of an enriched thesaurus as a better question-answering tool and information retrieval aid based on users’ perceptions. A small portion of the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) thesaurus was enriched, and two enriched mini-thesauri were compiled with different levels of detail. A total of 22 participants were recruited to test the usefulness of the three mini-thesauri for facilitating question-answering and information retrieval within the ERIC Abstracts of the EBSCOHost Database and on the Web using Google. The experimental results suggest that the enriched thesauri are better question-answering tools and information retrieval aids than the original thesaurus. The findings imply that thesauri enriched with semantic relations are useful in question-answering and modern information retrieval, although the role of the traditional thesaurus in modern information retrieval has diminished.