What is a Thesaurus?
An on-line dictionary gives the following explanation:

• A book of synonyms, often including related and contrasting words and antonyms.
• A book of selected words or concepts, such as a specialized vocabulary of a particular field, as of medicine or music

ETB Thesaurus has as a scope:

• Content of multimedia educational materials
• Content of teaching, guidance, evaluation, and administration supporting materials

What is the ETB Thesaurus used for?

ETB Thesaurus, this specialised vocabulary for multimedia educational resources, is used to index learning resources in EUN services. The initial idea was to use the Thesaurus to index  resources in the ETB-network, but now a much larger audience has showed interest and picking it up.

Thesaurus helps the retrieval of the material, allowing you to overcome a rigid classification system with more flexible Thesaurus retrieval method. You can see it at the beta interface of ETB at http://resources.eun.org.

Multilingual Thesaurus also helps you to find the material using the language that you feel the most comfortable with. You can try that at the ETB beta interface just by clicking the language items on the top of the bar.

What Languages are included?

The first goal of the ETB project was to make the Thesaurus in five languages, which were:

• English,
• French,
• German,
• Greek,
• Italian,
• Spanish

In the second phase more languages were added, since these languages were partners in the projects already:

• Danish
• Swedish
• Hebrew

Now, the project is over, but the Thesaurus building continues within other projects. New languages are added, latest being Hungarian. The Dutch and Polish versions are under translation actions, and more is to come.

Where can I find more information about the Thesaurus?

At the ETB website's subarea "Multilinguality and Thesaurus"
http://www.eun.org/goto.cfm?sid=440

ETB Thesaurus Description and Comments
by Marisa Trigari