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The Turfgrass Thesaurus

The Turfgrass Thesaurus is a structured keyword list which TIC uses to guide the indexing of articles when they are added to TGIF. Because we use the Thesaurus to guide indexing, searchers can use it to search, using the pathways of indexing.

The Thesaurus is a hierarchical inventory of keyword descriptors related to turf science. It details the interrelationships between terms, and attempts to bridge taxonomic, regional, historical, international, and common usage/scientific usage variations in words. For example, is it Poa annua or annual bluegrass or annual meadow-grass or low speargrass, etc.? How about "Fusarium blight" and all its associated terms? For the purpose of indexing, and frequently also for searching, these can be important questions.

What Thesaurus Descriptors Do
Descriptors (also called "keywords" or "index terms") are the subject terms which are assigned to an article when it is added to TGIF. It is important that descriptor terms be used consistently. The Thesaurus provides the necessary structure and speeds data entry into TGIF.

Why the Thesaurus is Useful
The indexing process, and thus the Turfgrass Thesaurus, are of more than passing interest to TGIF users. Using the Thesaurus can speed and improve your searching particularly if you use the "Power search" interface in TGIF. If you plan on using TGIF regularly, it may be worth your while to spend a bit of time learning about the thesaurus and indexing.