---
title: "Thesaurus (Legacy)"
canonical: "https://support.soutron.net/space/HG/3277346/Thesaurus%20(Legacy)"
format: markdown
---
The thesaurus is a fully integrated and fundamental part of the Soutron Library Management System. It enables you to control vocabularies and taxonomies for fields such as Subjects and Keywords, by creating a hierarchy of preferred terms that guide library staff and users to the most appropriate term. For this purpose, the thesaurus is most effective if you create a network of relationships between terms, with a relatively small number of top level terms.

It can also be used to create authority lists for fields such as Authors, Corporate Authors, Publishers, etc. Even though these do not need a hierarchy, they benefit greatly from the addition of preferred / non-preferred terms.

The following term types are available:

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Broader Term (BT)** | A term which is more general than the current term<br>The Soutron Thesaurus is poly-hierarchical, ie a term can have more than one Broader Term assigned to it | *Nursing* is a Broader Term than *Paediatric Nursing* |
| **Narrower Terms (NT)** | Terms which are more specific than the current term | *Paediatric Nursing* is a Narrower Term than *Nursing* |
| **Related Terms (RT)** | Terms which are related to the current term in some other way | *Ecology* is a Related Term of *Environment* |
| **Use For (UF)** | The current term is used in preference to another term | *BBC* could be a preferred term for *British Broadcasting Corporation* |
| **Use (USE)** | A term which is to be used in preference to the current term | *British Broadcasting Corporation* could be a non-preferred term for *BBC* |
| **Scope Note** | A description of the term's meaning and / or how it is to be used | For example: "Use this term to describe ..." |

 

The most common tasks in the thesaurus are [searching](https://soutron.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HG/pages/3278725) and adding or editing terms.