Vocabulary Development and Maintenance: The Example of MeSH
Stuart J. Nelson · UNM’s Digital Repository (University of New Mexico) · 2004
The Medical Subject Headings are a controlled vocabulary used by the National Library of Medicine to index the medical literature for the MEDLINE database. A mission statement for MeSH clarified the goals, and led to a better understanding of the task at hand. With that understanding, the organization of MeSH and the criteria involved in preparing modifications are more easily described. Conflicts between the needs of the interface, of the indexers, and of the users arise and must be resolved. In a large database such as MEDLINE, citation maintenance becomes an important consideration.