The Information Dictionary

Royal School of Library and Information Science (logo)

The Information Dictionary (Informationsordbogen in Danish) is an offspring from a guide that was issued by the Danish Standards Council.  The web system is run by the Royal School of Library and Information Science.

The Information Dictionary has been an important asset for many years wrt. teaching, for instance, but updating and printing the publication were quite costly.

Publication on the web has solved this problem, and has made the dictionary available to many other users.

Apart from pages for searching and presentation the web system contains a complete set of online tools for editing a lexicon (creation of articles with user management, automatic check and maintenance of cross references, illustrations etc.).

The system is based on standard software that is available on practically any web server:  PHP and MySQL.

Currently, the lexicon contains a few thousand terms but several hundred thousands can be added without problems.

The system can be experienced online.
NB:  The system needs an update for modern screens (the client has postponed this change).

Features for standard users

Standard users typically access the system through the search page.

It provides fast full text search amongst Danish and English terms as well as dictionary articles etc.

The users may also browse through clusters of words and expressions that are connected by association.

Features for editors

Many other features are available to the editors.

The keys features are of course the possibilities for editing.  They are gathered in a form (thus avoiding many sub windows).  The form fields are filled in as needed and illustrations can be added.

Based on the form contents the system automatically formats the texts, and spreads the information into the right locations for optimum search and so that cross references can be maintained automatically etc.

New concepts can be created with or without publishing them, and they can be set to other states as a help for maintaining the dictionary.  One may add notes only to be seen by other editors.

It is simple to create cross references and homographs (different concepts/terms with the same spelling):

A cross reference (as a hyperlink) in a text is created simply by surrounding the reference text with square brackets.  E.g. ...a [punched card] is inserted....  The same principle is used to make hyperlinks to other web sites.

Homographs are created just by adding numbers to the terms.  E.g. album1 and album2 for a book and a music collection, respectively.

Many possibilities are available for controlling the layout like setting up tables, for instance.

Apart from normal search (adorned with extra information) the editors can also produce the following lists:

  • Cluster overview
  • Homograph overview (terms with same spelling)
  • Invalid/weak references (cross references)
  • Latest changes
  • Changed concepts within a specified date range
  • An editor’s changes

The system complies with dominating recommendations for terminological registration.

Documentation for every feature is available online (click on a question mark ?).