Overview
SIST ISO 25964-1:2013 is the Slovenian-adopted version of ISO 25964‑1:2011, the international standard that gives recommendations for the development, maintenance and exchange of thesauri for information retrieval. It applies to vocabularies used to retrieve information across all media (text, audio, image, physical objects, multimedia), including bibliographic databases, museum collections, portals and knowledge bases. The standard covers both monolingual and multilingual thesauri and includes a data model and recommended format for thesaurus import/export.
Key topics and technical requirements
ISO 25964‑1 provides practical guidance rather than prescriptive algorithms. Major technical topics include:
- Thesaurus objectives and vocabulary control - defining scope, purpose and intended users of a thesaurus.
- Concepts and scope notes - how to represent concepts and document their meaning consistently.
- Thesaurus terms - selection, grammatical form, capitalization, punctuation and preferred/non-preferred term handling.
- Complex concepts and multi-word terms - guidance on admitting, splitting and representing compound concepts.
- Equivalence and cross-language mapping - monolingual synonyms, quasi‑synonyms and degrees of equivalence across languages.
- Relationships between concepts - hierarchical (broader/narrower), associative and customized relationships.
- Facet analysis and presentation - structuring vocabularies and recommended display/layout conventions, including multilingual presentation and character encoding.
- Thesaurus construction and maintenance - planning, compilation, introduction, dissemination and updating procedures.
- Guidelines for thesaurus management software - data constraints, relationship modelling, editorial tools and housekeeping.
- Data model, exchange formats and protocols - a recommended data model (with an XML Schema in annex), import/export formats and considerations for integration with search/indexing systems.
- Integration with applications - interoperability needs for indexing and searching, and protocols for exchanging thesaurus data.
Practical applications and who uses it
ISO 25964‑1 is used by organizations that need consistent, interoperable controlled vocabularies to improve discoverability and retrieval:
- Librarians and cataloguers designing authority lists and subject vocabularies
- Information architects and metadata specialists building retrieval systems, digital repositories and knowledge bases
- Search and indexing engineers integrating controlled vocabularies with search engines and CMS
- Museum, archive and cultural heritage professionals managing collection metadata
- Publishers and portal managers implementing subject navigation and browse interfaces
The standard helps ensure consistent indexing, better search precision and smoother data exchange between systems.
Related standards
- ISO 25964 consists of multiple parts. Part 2 (under preparation) addresses interoperability with other vocabularies (classification schemes, ontologies, authority lists).
- ISO 25964‑1 supersedes older thesaurus standards ISO 2788 and ISO 5964.
Keywords: ISO 25964-1, thesauri, information retrieval, vocabulary interoperability, multilingual thesaurus, data model, exchange format, thesaurus management.