m tif
Report on the MoTIF project. Thesaurus construction guidelines and a pilot
thesaurus of Irish folklore. Catherine Ryan

Report on the MoTIF project. Thesaurus construction guidelines
and a pilot thesaurus of Irish folklore.
Catherine Ryan

This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 Ireland License.
When citing or attributing this work, please
use the following: Ryan, C. (2014), ‘Report on
the MoTIF project: thesaurus guidelines and pilot
thesaurus of Irish folklore’. Dublin: Royal Irish
Academy and National Library of Ireland.
DOI: 10.3318/DRI.MoTIF.2014.1
Design: Fidelma Slattery

MoTIF project

MoTIF project team: Sandra Collins, Digital Repository of
Ireland; Rebecca Grant, Digital Repository of Ireland;
Eoghan Ó Carragáin, National Library of Ireland; Catherine
Ryan, Digital Repository of Ireland/National Library of
Ireland; Ger Wilson, National Library of Ireland
We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Dr Jodi
Schneider (INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics, formerly
Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI)); Dr Elizabeth
Mullins (University College Dublin (UCD)); Jane Burns (Royal
College of Surgeons in Ireland); Dr Christoph SchmidtSupprian (Trinity College Dublin); Dr Ríonach Uí Ógáin
(National Folklore Collection, UCD); Críostóir Mac
Cárthaigh (National Folklore Collection, UCD); and Anna
Bale (National Folklore Collection, UCD).

Executive summary

MoTIF (Mo Thesaurus of Irish Folklore) is a collaborative project undertaken by the Digital
Repository of Ireland (DRI) and the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
The MoTIF project created a set of guidelines called Thesaurus construction guidelines:
An introduction to thesauri and guidelines on their construction. Thesauri are indexing
and retrieval tools, which improve search and discovery systems and website navigation
across all sectors, including cultural heritage as well as business and enterprise. The
aforementioned guidelines act as a comprehensive introduction to thesauri and provide
guidance on the construction of thesauri using facet analysis, an increasingly popularmethod of organising terms selected for inclusion in a thesaurus and one recommended
by ISO 25964-1.
The idea for the project arose following the Digital archiving in Ireland: National surveyof the humanities and social sciences DRI report, which identified a number of problematic
areas in Irish-language names, both personal names and place names, as well a large
number of either custom-made vocabularies or international vocabularies adapted foruse with Irish content. The guidelines offer advice on how to bridge this vocabulary gap
and ensure that professionals have the advice they need to improve their own data procedures by adhering to international standards and best practices such as ISO 25964-1.
Information and documentation: Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies.
In order to demonstrate the principles outlined in the guidelines, a pilot thesaurus of
Irish folklore was constructed. This pilot was also called MoTIF.1 It acts as a sample thesaurus and demonstration of TemaTres2, the open source thesaurus management
software, which users can browse, explore and evaluate for their own vocabularies. The
pilot thesaurus is not, however, intended as a complete indexing and retrieval tool.
The Digital Repository of Ireland and the National Library of Ireland will promote international standards and best practices in search and retrieval of content among librarians,
archivists and other information professionals in the cultural heritage and enterprisecommunities by disseminating the guidelines on thesaurus construction and the accompanying pilot to Irish data producers, consumers and custodians.

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http://apps.dri.ie/motif
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/

The MoTIF Project

The aim of MoTIF, a collaborative project led by the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI)
and the National Library of Ireland (NLI), was to produce guidelines on the constructionof thesauri for librarians, archivists, museum professionals and other information professionals. These guidelines act as a comprehensive introduction to thesauri and provide
guidance on the construction of thesauri using facet analysis. The guidelines are illustrated by MoTIF, the pilot thesaurus of Irish folklore.
Thesauri are vital and valuable tools in content discovery, and information organisation
and retrieval, activities common to all fields, including cultural heritage and higher education as well as business and enterprise. Thesauri allow information professionals torepresent content in a consistent manner and enable researchers and the public to findthis content easily and quickly. These guidelines will give professionals the advice thatthey need to improve their own data management processes by adhering to international standards and best practices.
The pilot thesaurus acts as an illustrative guide, providing examples throughout the thesaurus construction guidelines, as well as a sample thesaurus and outlining theinternational principles and best practices in the guidelines. It also acts as a demonstration of TemaTres, the open source thesaurus management software used in the project,
and as a core body of work, which can be expanded further into a complete thesaurus.

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Project participants

The Digital Repository of Ireland is a national trusted digital repository for Ireland’ssocial and cultural data. The repository will link together and preserve both historicaland contemporary data held by Irish institutions, providing a central Internet access point
and interactive multimedia tools. As a national e-infrastructure for the future of education and research in the humanities and social sciences, DRI will be available for use by
the public, students and scholars.
The Digital Repository of Ireland is built by a research consortium of six academic partners
working together to deliver the repository, policies, guidelines and training. These
research consortium partners are the Royal Irish Academy (RIA, lead institute); theNational University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM); Trinity College Dublin (TCD); Dublin
Institute of Technology (DIT); the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG); and the
National College of Art and Design (NCAD). DRI is also supported by a network of academic, cultural, social and industry partners, including the NLI, the National Archives of
Ireland (NAI) and Radio Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). Originally funded from the Higher Education
Authority Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI) Cycle 5 for 2011–15, DRI has also received awards from Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland,
the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and The Ireland Funds,
and has extended its funding to 2019. The DRI Research Consortium is currently collaborating with a network of cultural, social, academic and industry partners, including the
NLI, the NAI and RTÉ.
The mission of the National Library of Ireland is to collect, preserve, promote andmake accessible the documentary and intellectual record of the life of Ireland and tocontribute to the provision of access to the larger universe of recorded knowledge. The
NLI offers an exciting programme of exhibitions, events and learning opportunities forpeople of all ages and interests. It is driving a forward-looking programme of digitisation,
digital preservation, and innovative access, visualisation and engagement tools for
Ireland’s rich cultural collections. For example, the NLI is one of the main contributors toVufind, an open-source discovery interface, which is used by hundreds of libraries aroundthe world to enhance access to research materials. The NLI also has considerable experience in converting and enhancing metadata for cultural heritage items, including
working with linked data resources like Freebase, VIAF and DBpedia.

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Introduction to thesauri for information retrieval

Different types of knowledge organisation systems (KOS) and knowledge representation
systems abound. From controlled vocabularies to authority lists and from classification
schemes to taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies, different systems have been used todefine and describe terms and concepts and, in general, to organise knowledge forbetter search and retrieval for many years.
Specifically, a thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary, which contains hierarchical relationships
such as broader term (BT) and narrower term (NT), equivalence relationships such as use(USE) and use for (UF) as well as associative relationships such as related term (RT). A thesaurus can be referred to as a networked collection of terms where all terms areconnected and not only assists users in finding information but also in understanding it.
Improving a user’s ability to find the information they are looking for quickly and easilyis the main goal of most thesauri and other controlled vocabularies. They are tools thatallow both the indexer and the researcher to use the same terms to describe the same
subjects or concepts, allowing for easier search and retrieval of information about a particular domain (International Organization for Standardization 2011). By doing so, they
support indexing, retrieval, and the organisation and navigation of information.
The relationships in a thesaurus guide users to more general or more specific concepts
by allowing them to navigate the vocabulary and choose the most suitable terms fortheir content. This ability to navigate the thesaurus makes it much more useful than asimple controlled list of terms as it allows a user to browse a subject domain or website.
Thesauri also have their place in business. Significant time and money is lost whenemployees spend time searching for content on an intranet and cannot find it quickly
or easily. If a customer cannot find a product on a website, they go elsewhere, usuallyto a competitor (Stewart 2011). Faceted navigation, the principle of division and arrays
are now visible on many websites, especially on those which sell products to consumers.

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Project overview

The DRI report Digital archiving in Ireland identified a number of problematic areas in
Irish language names, both personal names and place names, as well a large number of
either custom-made vocabularies or international vocabularies adapted for use with Irish
content (O’Carroll & Webb 2012). An opportunity was identified to ensure that professionals have the advice that they need to improve their own data methodologies byadhering to international standards and best practices.
To this end, the MoTIF project produced a set of guidelines, Thesaurus construction guidelines: An introduction to thesauri and guidelines on their construction and anaccompanying pilot thesaurus, MoTIF, which acts as a sample thesaurus and visualdemonstration of the international standards and best practice outlined in the guidelines.
The guidelines are intended as a resource for librarians, archivists and other information
professionals who wish to organise and annotate their content for improved search andretrieval according to international standards and best practices including ISO 25964-1.
Information and documentation: Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies.
These principles and practices are relevant to the cultural heritage sector as well as tobusiness and enterprise and the advantages of consistent search and retrieval arecommon across all sectors through the efficient discovery of both cultural heritage
content and business products.
The pilot was intended to act as a sample thesaurus and a visual demonstration of theinternational principles and best practices outlined in that document. It also demonstrates TemaTres, the open source thesaurus management software used to manageand publish the thesaurus, which users can browse, explore and evaluate for their own
vocabularies.

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Guidelines

A set of guidelines, Thesaurus construction guidelines: An introduction to thesauri andguidelines on their construction, were produced to provide a comprehensive introduction
to thesauri and advice on how to construct thesauri following international standards
and best practice.
A comprehensive literature review was undertaken covering the main aspects of thesaurus construction from both a theoretical and practical viewpoint. The main literatureand standards included ISO 25964: Information and documentation, thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies as well as writings by experts in knowledgeorganisation and management. A full bibliography has been provided in the guidelines
document.
The common elements and processes outlined in the literature were collated andbrought together in the guidelines to illustrate best practice and international standards
and recommendations.
The guidelines cover the basics of thesaurus construction. This included the main elements of a thesaurus:
Terms and concepts;
Equivalence, hierarchical and associative relationships;
Notes; andNode labels and arrays.
The Thesaurus construction guidelines also outlined the broad steps involved in the thesaurus construction process. Construction is an iterative process in parts and some of
the following steps will overlap:
Selection and recording of terms;
Determining the structure and display;
Vocabulary analysis;

10Creating relationships and notes;
Creating an alphabetical list from the systematic display;
Review by experts;
Documentation, including an introduction and editorial guide.
The guidelines also explained facet analysis, an increasingly popular method of organising terms selected for inclusion in a thesaurus and one recommended by ISO 25964-1.
This was the method used to construct MoTIF, the pilot thesaurus of Irish folklore.
In addition to thesaurus construction and facet analysis, the guidelines also cover thebasics of thesaurus planning, what aspects of thesaurus construction and maintenanceneed to be considered before and after construction. Multilingual thesauri, the processof mapping different thesauri to each other and the relationship between thesauri and
the Semantic Web were also briefly touched upon.

Pilot thesaurus of Irish folklore3

MoTIF, the pilot thesaurus of Irish folklore, was intended to accompany the Thesaurus
construction guidelines: An introduction to thesauri and guidelines on their construction
and act as a sample thesaurus and a visual demonstration of the international principles
and best practices outlined in that document.
There are a number of differences between a pilot and a full thesaurus. As a pilot, MoTIF
is not intended as a complete indexing and retrieval tool but instead as a visual tool toassist readers to understand the principles, techniques and elements outlined in theguidelines document itself. The terms and concepts, relationships and notes present in
the pilot are presented as examples and should not be considered exhaustive.
The project used the open source thesaurus management software, TemaTres4, to
manage and publish the pilot thesaurus online.

3
4

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http://apps.dri.ie/motif
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/

Selecting terms for the Thesaurus I

The pilot thesaurus limited its scope to collecting approximately 350 terms from two
chapters of Seán Ó Súilleabháin’s Handbook of Irish folklore (Ó Súilleabháin 1942), andother vocabulary resources outlined below. These two chapters, on livelihood and household support, and nature, were chosen as they contained a broad range of terms, which
could be used to demonstrate most thesaural relationships and facet analysis. It was,however, not possible to select all relevant terms from these chapters within the timeframe of the project.
Additional terms were sourced from some article titles from Béaloideas, the journal of
the Folklore of Ireland Society (Folklore of Ireland Society 2012), and Alan Dundes The
study of folklore (Dundes 1965) as it provided a list of many forms of folklore. Most Irish
terms were excluded from the pilot thesaurus and will need to be considered at a later
date as part of a multilingual thesaurus. The exception to this was the term ‘shebeen’,
which was included as an example of an Irish loan term.

Selecting terms for the Thesaurus II

During the selection process, terms for the pilot thesaurus were recorded in Microsoft
Excel. Any associative relationships were also recorded. Definitions were included where
any terms were ambiguous and qualifiers were used where necessary.
When considering the form of entry to be entered into the Excel spreadsheet, the pilot
thesaurus followed the guidelines for English-language terms as set out by ISO 259641 as follows:
Nouns and noun phrases — count nouns (dogs, cats) appear in the plural in thethesaurus. Non-count nouns (livestock) appear in the singular.
Verbs — verbs take the gerund or verbal noun forms (fishing, hunting). The pilot
thesaurus does not contain verbs in the infinitive.

12Adjectives — adjectives were avoided unless deemed significant to the subject.
Adverbs — as per standard practice, adverbs were avoided in the pilot thesaurus.
Articles — articles (a, the) were avoided unless they were an integral part of theterm. If articles are used, equivalence relationships should be set up between thepreferred term (which uses the article) and the non-preferred term (which does not
use the article).

Terms with similar meaning were then grouped and preferred terms were chosen.
Context was important to consider when choosing the terms for the thesaurus. For
instance, non-scientific terms were chosen above scientific terms, where they appeared,
as this matched the vocabulary found in the majority of the vocabulary resources. A
similar style to the folklore literature (Selection I) was followed where possible.
In line with trends in thesaurus construction and best practice, and on the recommendation of international standards, the pilot employed the method of ‘splitting’compound terms where practical and in such a way as to avoid inconsistency that is no
more than two split components per compound concept. In practice, the terms assembled were comparatively simple and the issue of splitting compound concepts did notarise frequently.

Determination of the systematic structure

Facet analysis, with facets as top concepts, or top terms (TTs) in the hierarchies, waschosen as this is a more flexible structure, which can be more easily updated and theterms that were gathered logically fell into fundamental categories. This approach
was also considered as a good demonstration of the hierarchy rules laid down by ISO
26594-1 that is that to form a proper hierarchy, narrower terms should fall into one of
the following three relationship categories:
The generic relationship where the broader and narrower terms form agenus/species or thing/kind relationship.

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The partitive relationship where they form a whole/part relationship.
The instance relationship, which is used to name particular instances of a class of things.

At this stage, the decision was taken to structure the pilot thesaurus of Irish folklore
using the fundamental facets as the main divisions while more detailed elements of thesystematic structure were only made clear during the vocabulary analysis.

Vocabulary analysis using facet analysis

Terms in the vocabulary analysis process were recorded in Microsoft Excel for the initial
analysis and Microsoft Word for the secondary analysis as this allowed for easier basic
arranging and subdividing. In the first stage of the analysis, the selected terms wereorganised into basic groups. Following initial groupings, review and analysis, the fundamental facets decided on for the pilot thesaurus were:Time

AgentsPlace/space/environment

Objects

Products

Materials

Activities

Attributes and properties

Processes and phenomena

Parts

Events
These fundamental facets were complemented by the facets of Genre and Abstract entities and concepts.
The next stage of the vocabulary analysis involved breaking down the facets into narrower divisions, using node labels to divide the facets into sub-facets or arrays andorganising them according to the characteristics of division. The sub-facets and arrays
should be considered as illustrative examples only and not as complete and exhaustivearrays as would be found in a complete thesaurus.

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Addition of associative relationships,
definitions, scope and other notes

Following the creation of the equivalence and hierarchical relationships, the terms were
inputted into the thesaurus management software. Once all terms were present in thesoftware, associative relationships were then added. This is the process recommended
by ISO 25964-1 as the most useful associative relationships are those that exist between
hierarchies and therefore are easier to create when all hierarchies have been inputted
into the thesaurus management software (ISO 2011).
As previously mentioned, the software chosen for the project was TemaTres. The advantages of using TemaTres were:
It is open source software.
All thesaural relationships are supported.
It has out of the box functionality and a workable display.
It uses export functionality in a number of formats, including SKOS-Core.

Disadvantages included:
No comprehensive manual exists;
Technical support was required for the initial set-up.
Definitions were added for a select number of terms and these definitions were takenfrom the Oxford English Dictionary Online. Scope notes were added to some of the top
terms in the hierarchy to provide sample guidance on the placement of terms.

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Print and electronic versions of the pilot thesaurus

Two lists, alphabetical and hierarchical, were then generated within TemaTres andexported as standard text files. These formed the basis of the print version of the thesaurus, which is now available online in both alphabetical and hierarchical forms.
Using the TemaTres software, an electronic version of the thesaurus now exists. It contains both hierarchical and alphabetical displays, which can be browsed as well as theability to search by keyword. The electronic version is now available at http://apps.dri.ie/
motif.

Review by experts

The guidelines were submitted for external review to experts in the field of cataloguing,
metadata and knowledge organisation. The pilot thesaurus was submitted to subject
experts for review and feedback, and we gratefully acknowledge the contributions of
Dr Christoph Schmidt-Supprian (Trinity College Dublin); Jane Burns (Royal College ofSurgeons in Ireland); Dr Jodi Schneider (INSIGHT, formerly DERI); Dr Elizabeth Mullins(University College Dublin); Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh (National Folklore Collection, UCD);
and Anna Bale (National Folklore Collection, UCD).

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Future work

Potential future work would include constructing a full thesaurus of Irish folklore byfurther engaging with experts in the folklore field and mapping to other vocabularies. It
could also include the development of a multilingual thesaurus in both English and Irish.
Another logical extension of this project would be to engage with linked data professionals, represent the thesaurus in SKOS format and publish to the Semantic Web. By
publishing folklore data in a structured, machine-readable format, the project will open
up Irish data, which can then be exploited by web developers and computer scientists
as well as information, heritage and research professionals. This dataset can then belinked to external data across the Web, adding additional context and value by linking
together digitised collections of Irish interest.
Dissemination and engagement with librarians, archivists and other information professionals in the cultural heritage and enterprise communities will be an ongoing activity.

Bibliography

Dundes, A. (ed.) 1965 The study of folklore. London. Prentice Hall.
Folklore of Ireland Society. 2012 Béaloideas: the journal of the Folklore of Ireland
Society.
International Organization for Standardization 2011 ISO 25964-1:2011, Information
and Documentation. Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies. Part 1:
Thesauri for information retrieval. Geneva: International Organization forStandardization.
Ó Súilleabháin, S. 1942 A handbook of Irish folklore. Dublin. Educational Company of
Ireland Ltd. for the Folklore of Ireland Society.
O’Carroll, A., and Webb, S. 2012 Digital archiving in Ireland: national survey of thehumanities and social sciences. Maynooth. National University of Ireland.
Stewart, D. L. 2011 Building enterprise taxonomies: a controlled vocabulary primer,
2nd edn. Lexington, KY. Mokita Press.

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