control vocabulary tools

the process of subject indexing involves two quite distinct intellectual steps: the ‘conceptual analysis’ of the documents and ‘translation’ of the conceptual analysis into a particular vocabulary. The second step in any information retrieval environment involves a ‘controlled vocabulary’, that is a limited set of terms that must be used to represent the subject matter of documents. Similarly, the process of preparing the search strategy also involves two stages: conceptual analysis and translation. The first step involves an analysis of the request to determine what the user is really looking for, and the second step involves translation of the conceptual analysis to the vocabulary of the system.