Compilation of DOD Scientific and Technical Intelligence Thesaurus

A description is presented of the compilation of a controlled vocabulary for subject indexing scientific and technical information within the DOD intelligence community. The product of the effort was a computer-generated thesaurus comprising some 22,540 terms which corresponds closely to the CIRC thesaurus FTD-TM-22-07-69 with regard to format and term construction. The final thesaurus was compiled after preparing four microthesauri for other activities in the intelligence community which were then integrated with the CIRC thesaurus. The DOD S and T Intelligence Thesaurus is divided into three parts a subject-structures display in which the terms are hierarchically related within 56 broad subject areas a permuted display in which the single- and multi-word terms are arranged by computer in the order of each word that appears within the terms and an alphabetical display in which the terms are listed alphabetically with cross references among subject-related or hierarchically related terms and to synonyms where applicable, and with scope notes to indicate the intended usage of ambiguous terms. Appended to the report are discussions of the existing procedures for thesaurus maintenance at CIRC and of some considerations concerning the philosophy of the CIRC thesaurus, with recommendations regarding both. Also appended is a description of a preliminary study of thesaurus maintenance using on-line data processing techniques.