ED 509 Special Education: Foundations and Characteristics: Information on ERIC

THESAURUS

A thesaurus is an alphabetical listing of all the subject terms in a single database, used to classify and organize information for that database. The thesaurus shows relationships between terms such as synonymous or related terms, and hierarchical arrangements such as broader terms, or narrower terms. Many subjects also have associated scope notes.

Most ProQuest databases have an associated thesaurus (also called a controlled vocabulary of subject terms).  Editors use the thesauri to assign subject headings to documents in each database.

THESAURUS TOOLS:

For any term you find in the thesaurus, you might see one or more of the following (or similar) bolded words and phrases:

• Use terms/Use term for — synonymous concepts pointing you to authorized term
• Use instead — these terms are the preferred thesaurus terms for your search
• Narrower terms — more restrictive terms associated with a subset of records
• Broader terms — less restrictive terms associated with a larger set of record
• Related terms — similar terms suggested for use with your search
• Scope notes — Scope notes contain information about the use of a subject heading. The scope note may contain a definition of the    subject, the year the subject term came into use, and other important information.

Retrieved from: ProQuest Help: Thesaurus