High-Level Thesaurus (HILT) project, phase IV

As it becomes increasingly difficult for users to satisfy their information needs due to the rapid expansion of the Web, it is also becoming progressively impractical for users to consult a wide range of sources to satisfy an information query. Consequently, it is of growing importance that users are able to search multiple distributed heterogeneous digital repositories simultaneously. With such a wide variety of resources available, however, the feasibility of achieving interoperability between them is gradually diminishing. Not only do services employ different technical standards, indexing practices, search facilities and algorithms, but also the basic language on which retrieval systems are founded differs widely. It is no longer sufficient for users to make decisions on whether to use keyword or phrase searching, employ Boolean operators, or try their luck with truncation, they must also now give consideration to the terminology they use. Problems relating to disparate terminology use have been an impediment to information retrieval for many years, but the growth of Web, associated heterogeneous digital repositories, and the need for distributed searching within multi-scheme information environments (such as the JISC IE) has recently drawn the issue into sharp focus. The HILT project, which is now in phase IV, aims to research, investigate and develop pilot solutions for problems pertaining to cross-searching multi-subject scheme information environments, as well as providing a variety of other terminological searching aids.