It’s a Women’s World in the Women’s Thesaurus: on the history, development and use
of the (European) Women's Thesaurus
By Tilly Vriend, coordinator databases IIAV
My reflections on the (European) Women‟s Thesaurus (EWT) will focus on the history and
development of this tool for indexing women‟s information. I will discuss the background
and principles of the thesaurus, the process of maintaining it, and the partners who have been
involved. I will also reflect on the role of the thesaurus in making „women‟s information‟
accessible. I address the adaptation, use and translation of the thesaurus in different countries
(from Mexico to Turkey), and, ultimately, I will question the relevance and use of a thesaurus
in the light of digital developments in our field.
History of the thesaurus in the context of the IIAV
Background
In 1935, three Dutch feminists – Rosa Manus (1881-1943), Johanna Naber (1859-1941) and
Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot (1897-1989), founded the International Archives for the
Women's Movement (IAV) in Amsterdam.
Their aim was twofold: to create a library and archive to collect and preserve the cultural
heritage of women and to stimulate and publish academic research. Rosa Manus contributed a
gift which gave the collection its start: three hundred books that had belonged to Aletta
Jacobs, the first female doctor in the Netherlands.
Over the years, the IIAV has become an internationally renowned women‟s library and
archive with a unique collection of archives, books and other materials on the position of
women, women‟s studies, women‟s history and women‟s movements.
Making women’s information accessible
‘Although many materials that preserve women’s history and accomplishments have been
held in libraries and archives for many years, they have not necessarily been organized in
ways that provide good access to them’ (Stafford, 2000)
Information retrieval is an essential activity of libraries: it provides access to the subject
information contained within the collections. We want not only to collect and preserve
information but also to guarantee easy access to this information. In other papers at this
conference, we will hear more about existing indexing systems which have been developed to
make information accessible. Well-known, mainstream systems, for instance, include the
Dewey Decimal classification, the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), and the system of
the Library of Congress.
IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) had already
formulated it this way in 1957: ‘information retrieval is a working tool designed to help the
user to find his way about the mass of published information relating to a certain field of
knowledge. The user may have a detailed understanding of the pattern of knowledge in the
subject he explores, or he may have an uncertain and confused understanding of it. An
information retrieval system should be designed, first, to help even the ignorant user to pass
from the vague formulation of a subject to its precise formulation in the system’ (IFLA
Classification Research Group, 1957)
Why a women’s thesaurus?
To understand the need for a specific tool to index women‟s information, we first have to take
a look back. The founders of the IAV developed a simple coding scheme to index the
information in their collections. For years this system was adequate for indexing the
information they collected. In those early years, the IAV was mainly a physical library,
where visitors would come and search the card catalogue, usually with the help of a librarian.
The number of subjects within the collection was still rather limited. The computerization of
libraries only began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the same time, a tremendous revival
was taking place in the women‟s movement: the so-called Second Feminist Wave in the
Netherlands and the growing popularity of women‟s studies programmes at universities. This
caused a rapid proliferation of courses and programmes, accompanied by a dramatic increase
in publications in both feminist and mainstream channels. It is therefore imperative that
students, scholars and librarians who work with women‟s materials be able to locate relevant
sources within numerous fields dispersed throughout the mass of information available in
published and electronic form. The language used to describe this mass of information,
however, has not kept up with developments in women‟s movements and women‟s studies.
Initially the IIAV forced the new subjects into the old indexing scheme, but we realised at a
certain point that this effort was doomed to fail.
One of the tools which can provide access to women‟s materials is a thesaurus: a controlled
and dynamic vocabulary or list of terms, aimed at describing (or indexing) and locating
(retrieving) information in the collections of libraries and documentation centres. These kinds
of lists have often been the target of feminist criticism. Vocabulary issues are complex.
„Standard terminologies and thesauri are frequently sexist or gender-stereotyped and lack
feminist terms altogether‟ (Detlevsen, 1986)
Existing thesauri and or classification schemes were also not what one would call: user- or
woman-friendly. „Although they pretend to be universal, neutral or inclusive, women‟s words
and women‟s worlds are hardly found‟, as noted by Drenthe and Van der Sommen in a
feasibility study (Drenthe and Van der Sommen, 1987.) The UDC provides infamous
examples: the term Women could be found under the category Morals and Customs,
Menstruation under Medicine, and Lesbian women under categories such as Psychopaths and
Hysterics.
Feminist librarians have therefore concentrated on reforming existing cataloguing practices to
meet researchers‟ information needs more efficiently (Searing, 1991). American women‟s
librarians were the first in the 1980s to support the construction of a special women‟s
thesaurus. This thesaurus (Capek, 1987) was produced in 1987 to make collections dealing
with women‟s issues accessible by computer. Drenthe, information specialist at the IIAV at
the time, was responsible for one of the international testing sites of Capek‟s thesaurus in the
Netherlands. It did not seem to be a practical indexing tool for librarians; the many
associations and „see also‟ references complicated the exact choice of an indexing term.
The Dutch Women’s Thesaurus
With the support of all women‟s collections in the Netherlands and Belgium (more than 50 at
the time), we decided to build our own thesaurus, more adapted to the Dutch and European
situation, and reflecting the developments within the women‟s movement and within
women‟s studies, as well as the complexity of women‟s lives and work (Wilmink and
Mensink, 2000)
In 1985, the first ideas were presented, and, in 1987, the thesaurus project was launched. After
a process of seven years of extensive research, the Dutch Women‟s Thesaurus was presented
in March 1992. (Drenthe and Van der Sommen, 1992) (This is, of course, a very concise
history of the thesaurus project.) The Dutch and Flemish women‟s libraries now had their own
indexing system with more than 2200 semantically and generically related terms, constructed
as a professional tool for indexers and users of the library.
Some characteristics of the Women’s Thesaurus
1) One of the main characteristics of the women‟s thesaurus was the so-called "-w principle"
(literally spoken as the "minus w principle"). This means that we assumed that all keywords
referred to women. If a publication was about men, -w (i.e., “not woman") was added. In
Dutch, for example, there is a specific suffix to indicate female and male occupations. In
general, we chose the „male‟ word because the female word often sounds like a form of
disqualification. In the thesaurus, for example, we used the general term (i.e., the traditionally
male term) for dentist, and so this term indicates a female dentist. A dentist -w is a male
dentist. The -w suffix is also used with other terms. A general term like "ethnic minorities"
refers to the position of women, so when a document deals with men, -w is added. This
contradicts the mainstream practice, where the generic term equals the male term.
2) The second main characteristic can be found in the instructions for use, or „crossreferences‟. In the Women‟s Thesaurus, the RT (related term) is used to emphasize the
political choice that has been made. For example, a term such as „women‟s culture‟ or
„feminist literary criticism‟ is not an NT (narrower term) of the generic term „culture‟ or
„literary criticism‟
I remember we were all very excited at the IIAV when we finally had the Women‟s
Thesaurus. It completely changed our indexing practices. In the beginning it was quite hard to
find your way in all terms in the Women‟s Thesaurus. But it did not take long before we
discovered the many possibilities for indexing information: from Amazons, to Anorexianervosa, from Black feminism, Child abuse, and Feminist media to Images of women. These
terms were all found in the European Women‟s Thesaurus. We were thrilled that we could
finally give detailed access to all aspects of women‟s lives.
The European Women’s Thesaurus
Positive experience with the Dutch women's thesaurus fuelled the plan to develop a
standardized European Women's Indexing system. The lack of a common indexing system
was seen as an obstacle to cooperation between women‟s libraries and documentation centres
in Europe. An international team of women's studies librarians and information specialists, all
members of WINE, the Women‟s Information Network in Europe, supported the plans, and
the project received funding from the Equal Opportunities Unit of the European Commission.
In 1997 the project was launched. The IIAV (the International Information Centre and
Archives for the Women‟s Movement) in Amsterdam, KVINFO Centre for Information on
Women and Gender in Copenhagen, Denmark, RoSa Documentation Centre in Brussels,
Bibliotheca / Centro di Documentazione delle Donne in Bologna, and Nordic Institute for
Women‟s Studies and Gender Research (NIKK) in Oslo formed a working group to develop a
basic English-language European Women's Thesaurus (the so-called EWT). The first step in
the process was the translation of the Dutch Women‟s Thesaurus into English. …after the
translation was finished, a group of women‟s studies experts carefully checked the translation
to see if all terms were translated correctly and truly reflected the developments within
women‟s studies…The project group thought it very important that the EWT would be a
product that could be widely applicable‟ (Wilmink and Mensink 2000). At a meeting in
Brussels in May 1998, the project group invited representatives of the national focal points for
women‟s information from all member states within the European Union. Most
representatives saw opportunities to start using the EWT, either as a new indexing system or
as a supplement to their existing systems. (Wilmink and Mensink 2000) At the time, we
believed that a standardized European indexing system would make it possible to start
building a European women's digital library. Women's libraries in Europe specializing in
processing information on gender equality and women's studies would cooperate in linking
their websites and those of archives. A multilingual thesaurus was seen as the groundwork for
the creation of a virtual library.
In August 1998, the European Women‟s Thesaurus (Boere, 1998) was presented at the
successful Know How Conference on the World of Women‟s Information in Amsterdam. The
more than 400 participants from women‟s information centres all over the world received a
free copy to take home.
The European Women‟s Thesaurus was intentionally broadly constructed in order to allow
indexing all fields related to the position of women and women‟s studies. The thesaurus
would make it possible to overcome language barriers, to develop broader cross-European
perspectives and to facilitate the exchange of information.
It could be used to index a range of sources (political and judicial decisions, statistics,
research, etc.) and was suitable for users with different backgrounds (governments,
researchers, NGOs, media, women and men). The basic European Women‟s Thesaurus
contains the terms which are applicable in every European member state. Specific cultural,
political and judicial adaptations on the basic European thesaurus can be developed for each
specific European country, in all languages.
Partners (LOVI) involved in maintaining the thesaurus
Since language is constantly changing, the ongoing, structural maintenance of a thesaurus is
essential. The addition of new terms is necessary as new concepts develop, and it may become
necessary to delete or change existing terms. In the Netherlands and Belgium a number of
libraries have been involved in the development and maintenance of the Dutch Women‟s
Thesaurus from the start. They are organised in the thesaurus group of the Dutch and Belgian
national network of women‟s libraries (called the LOVI thesaurus group). With the help of a
discussion list, ideas for new terms are exchanged, and problems and solutions discussed.
Once a potential term is accepted, the IIAV writes scope notes and defines relationships with
other terms. In a meeting (every 3 months), all members convene to exchange information
regarding new developments and to keep in touch. Ultimately, the IIAV is responsible for
updating and maintaining the Dutch Women‟s Thesaurus. Keeping a thesaurus up to date is a
costly affair. It involves input from users, and even when this is provided, it is a timeconsuming task to organise the maintenance efficiently (with respect to technical and content
issues). At the moment, the IIAV devotes 200 hours annually to maintaining the thesaurus.
And this is not enough!
In general, LOVI members are quite satisfied with this process. Nevertheless, we do
encounter problems, which usually involve expectations regarding matters such as printing
formats, new editions of the thesaurus or sending updated versions. Most of the other
women‟s libraries in the Netherlands that use the thesaurus have fewer staff members or work
only with volunteers. They do not have the means, time and experience to contribute as much
as they or we would like. As a result, the IIAV is seen as the big „rich‟ professional aunt
(metaphorically) who should step forward to manage this task. Since we are facing budget
cuts, the IIAV has to be attentive to achieving efficiency in the process of keeping the
thesaurus up to date.
When it comes to the maintenance of the EWT, the European Women‟s Thesaurus, we face
different challenges. After the production of the thesaurus, the partners wanted to ensure the
continuous development of the EWT. A maintenance group was formed. The idea was that all
partners working with the thesaurus would keep it up to date by adding new concepts. In
theory, this was a good concept, but in practice it has not worked out this way.
The adaptation, use and translation of the thesaurus internationally
The European organisations which developed the EWT together hoped that many European
women‟s libraries would start to use the EWT: „In the future, if more collections were
indexed using the same thesaurus, integrated searches in several catalogues of these
collections would be possible‟ (Wilmink and Mensink 2000). Drenthe formulated her dream
in this way: „It may even turn out to be possible to fulfil another longstanding objective – the
creation of one single European database for women‟s issues, indexed and accessed by one
European thesaurus‟. (Drenthe,1993)
However, use of the thesaurus developed differently than we originally envisaged. The
commitment to use the thesaurus existed among our colleagues in Europe, but in practice,
most of the libraries were used to working with their own indexing schemes. Changing to
another indexing system is easier said than done, as all of you know. Besides, some of us are
part of university libraries and have to conform to the university‟s standards. In Europe,
WINE (the Women‟s Information Network Europe) applied for funding to create a European
Women‟s Digital Library; the EWT formed the backbone of this initiative. In a „Women‟s
Digital Library in Europe….the material of the cultural and political heritage of European
women should be collected. A digital library of this kind should contribute to the
enhancements of the patrimony of the women‟s movement as a continuum: from suffragist
tradition…to the new wave of contemporary feminism‟ (Tagliavini and Garro, 2006)
Unfortunately, the EU did not see the relevance of this project and declined to fund it.
The EWT, however, did find its way to many other countries and women‟s libraries in the
world. In 2001, the IIAV was asked to coordinate the project „Building women‟s information
centres in Eastern Europe‟; the focus of this project was to help establish and professionalize
women‟s information centres in the newly democratic states of Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet republics. Seventeen participants from 15 countries learned the basics of library
management, building databases and websites, and how to index women‟s information using
the EWT. As a result, three participants started projects to translate the EWT into their own
languages (Croatian, Czech, and Rumanian).
As I stand here, I am proud to say that the EWT has now been translated into Japanese,
Croatian, Czech, Rumanian, Slovak, Russian, Greek, Polish and Spanish. A Farsi translation
is underway, and the Turkish version is almost ready. This shows that there was and is a need
for a women‟s thesaurus. The countries that translated the thesaurus all had more or less the
same experience. In the EWT they found a basic list of terms that reflected the world of
women, women‟s movements and women‟s studies, strongly influenced by Western European
visions and experiences in this field. Women in Eastern Europe found, for example, that the
terms to describe the political transition in their countries after the „Iron Curtain‟ collapsed
were missing. All countries involved in a translation of the EWT knew they would have to
add specific terms reflecting their own culture, as well as terms concerning national
education, legislation and social security systems. Their critique focused on other topics. They
were, for instance, critical of oversized thematic clusters, like Economy or
Language/literature, or about the large number of terms reflecting Western European culture
(e.g., too many terms for Christianity). They also critiqued the formal structure; so-called
„Orphans‟ and descriptors without hierarchical structure were encountered. Josef Schwarz
from the Czech EWT translation project wrote about the –w approach: „it is not applied
consistently …if all descriptors are primarily woman oriented, why do we find descriptors
like women‟s companies, women‟s archives, women‟s bookshops…It is clear that –w
approach is inconsistent and inorganic and as such should be left‟ (Schwarz, 2003) At the
IIAV, a library with literature mainly about women, we were used to these principles. But
these ideological choices made the use of the women‟s thesaurus by mainstream libraries
somewhat difficult (like in the case of the Czech Library of Gender Studies in Prague, which
is part of the University Library).
In 2007 we realised that a thorough process of analysing and updating the women‟s thesaurus
was necessary. A specialized library consultancy assisted us in analysing the Thesaurus.
(Sipkes, Astrid et.al. 2008) Several irregularities and inaccurate relationships were identified,
and deviations from the international ISO standards were also discovered. The final report
confirmed the critique from abroad. At the moment, we are implementing the report‟s
recommendations. Moreover, to ensure a more efficient work process, we have made an
inventory of all the steps involved in maintaining the thesaurus.
The library user and the women’s thesaurus
In pre-Google times, our users were quite content with the subject search options in our
library; the option to enter specialized terms from the Women‟s Thesaurus offered countless
possibilities.
At the same time, users have often reminded us that many thesaurus terms do not reflect their
spoken language or the terms they would prefer. We are now in the process of increasing the
number of synonyms for a term to help users and facilitate use of the thesaurus.
Things have changed since Google became the favourite search engine for a majority of
Internet users. Our users like to find the information they are looking for easily. Moreover
they are searching at home without the intervention of a library assistant. User surveys show
that free text search is the most common search option nowadays. This means that libraries
have to find better ways to „help the user‟.
Many thesaurus software producers have provided new versions of their traditional thesaurus
applications with more friendly Web interfaces. The best examples have used graphic
techniques (like „word clouds‟) to provide users with access to the rich cross-references and
multiple levels of relationships within the thesaurus. The Women‟s Thesaurus has been
available online for a couple of years now at www.iiav.nl/thesaurus/eng. By clicking on a
thesaurus term, the user can browse the thesaurus-related terms and choose the relevant ones,
enabling her to search the catalogue and all other databases at IIAV.
At the user‟s side of the search process, techniques are being developed for „ordinary‟ queries,
involving controlled information retrieval via thesaurus (invisible for the user). In other
words, if the user enters a term, the term is automatically mapped to the subject headings
(thesaurus terms) of the database. By spring 2009, the IIAV will launch its new website with
all kinds of new functionalities, like a Google search function, enabling the user to search all
databases.
Current developments in indexing: is there a future for the Women‟s Thesaurus?
Much has been written and proposed in the library and information science literature about
possible new strategies for access and retrieval, but few new approaches have actually been
developed, tested and implemented in recent generations of Library OPACs. At the same
time, professional human indexing keeps getting more expensive, while automatic indexing
becomes less expensive and more effective. The problem is that automatic indexing only
makes sense in searching digital information. Although the percentage of new online
publications is increasing tremendously (at IIAV, 27% of the annual growth in 2008); many
library collections are still physical. So what is the alternative? Anderson states: „In order to
improve the effectiveness and efficiency of information retrieval, librarians….need to stop
treating every document as if all documents, all texts and all messages were equally
important…we all learn about the “80-20 rule” that suggests that in any collection of
documents, 20% of the collections will get 80% of the use…‟ (Anderson, 2001) Anderson
suggests limiting professional human indexing for important documents. But: do we know
now which documents will be relevant in future?
Another cheap alternative is the technique of „tagging‟, whereby users of our information
systems are involved in „tagging‟ keywords that can be inserted as "metadata" in the material.
Examples of tagging in practice are popular websites, such as YouTube or Flickr. The IIAV
did a test in putting part of its collection of images on Flickr to collect extra information on
these images. In fact, these tags are uncontrolled keywords, so in this case we cannot speak of
controlled indexing any more, although it may help the indexer to improve the indexing
process. The advantage is that these tags reflect the use of words of the searcher. At the
moment „tagging‟ is considered to be more of a complement than a replacement (or
substitute) for classical indexing.
In the context of the semantic web, the development of ontologies as an integral
representation of real life is being propagated (advocated?) nowadays. The use of an Ontology
would lead to higher recall and precision, as the roles, relations and properties of the
keywords are defined. There are high expectations for these so-called „semantically rich
knowledge organization systems‟ (Soergel, 2004). An analysis of the EWT in 2008 made
clear that changing the EWT into an ontology would not be easy and would require an
extensive (thus costly) project. (Sipkes, Astrid et.al. 2008)
Advanced new automatic information retrieval does not seem to be an option for many of the
women‟s libraries and information centres either, since their collections are relatively small
and for the most part physical. To use these techniques (whether state-of-the-art text retrieval
techniques or methods for automatic information retrieval), a substantial amount of the
collection must be digitally available. Moreover these techniques are still very expensive!
Some people might say: why don‟t you stop indexing altogether, since the majority of people
find their information simply by using Google? For one thing, the user may still be unsure
how to find relevant information, even after narrowing a search, resulting in an abundance of
irrelevant hits. No wonder, considering the 40 billion Web pages that already exist!
Conclusion:
The European Women‟s Thesaurus has proved to be a relevant tool for indexing and
retrieving information on women and women‟s studies, not only in the Netherlands but also in
many other countries. In terms of international cooperation, we have not yet succeeded in
creating a European Women‟s Digital Library. However, the IIAV has learned a lot from the
experiences with the thesaurus translation projects in other countries. We learned to look at
the Women‟s Thesaurus with fresh eyes and realised we had to update it, to restore
relationships, to abandon principles that no longer function, and to streamline workflows. The
critique also made us aware of our „western way of thinking‟ when it comes to discussing new
terms and including „the other‟. During the 17 years of its existence, it has become a rich
resource, reflecting the broad range of possible concepts within the women‟s movement,
women‟s studies and women‟s lives over the last 17 years. Indeed, the women‟s thesaurus has
itself become part of women‟s cultural heritage. The Women‟s Thesaurus is very much alive
and kicking in 2008; she is a grown-up lady now. It is less certain whether the thesaurus will
be our vocabulary tool of choice for the next generation. That function may be carried out by
some form of taxonomy, ontology, mind-map or other tool as yet unnamed and undefined. In
our rapidly changing information environment, we still need to ensure that women around the
world can find the information they are looking for. As long as the EWT fulfils this function,
the developers of the EWT can feel more than pleased, because that is exactly what they have
achieved.
Amsterdam, November 22, 2008
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