What are the thesaurus and the controlled vocabulary?
Controlled vocabulary refers to the BCH’s thesaurus of pre-defined list of terms and related synonyms used in a specific context. Controlled vocabularies are used to register and search for information in the BCH databases. • A broader term indicates the more general class to which a term belongs in the controlled vocabulary; everything that is true of a term is also true of its broader term (e.g. Gossypium is broader than Gossypium hirsutum). • A narrower term indicates a more specific term or member of a class in the controlled vocabulary (e.g. Gossypium hirsutum is narrower than Gossypium). • A non-preferred term is a synonym to a preferred use term in the controlled vocabulary that has an equivalent meaning to the preferred use term, but is not used for indexing records (e.g. “bananas” is a non-preferred term for “banana”). • A preferred use term in the controlled vocabulary is the term selected from among synonyms to be used for indexing and retrieval purposes. This term may also
