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ERIC has an ongoing commitment to maintain the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (Thesaurus). In addition to adding
new terms, ERIC may modify the status of an existing Descriptor, or subject heading, if it has been rarely used in indexing, overlaps
with other terms, or becomes obsolete. ERIC may also reinstate terms if necessary. These changes, generally based on
literary warrant, are considered routine maintenance, and are in accordance with standard practices of thesaurus
development and maintenance as outlined and defined in
ANSI/NISO
Standard Z39.19-2005, Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled
Vocabularies. Other Thesaurus maintenance activities include updating hierarchical relationships and adding
or changing scope notes.
Examples:
Rarely Used Descriptors:
An evaluation of usage may identify Descriptors that have been rarely used for indexing documents. For example,
"Nembe" was used to index fewer than 5 documents in nearly 40 years. ERIC no longer uses this term, using
the Descriptor "African Languages" instead.
Overlapping Concepts:
"Foster Care," "Foster Children," "Foster Families," and "Foster
Parents" are overlapping concepts. The differences between them could fragment, rather than enhance,
precision search and recall. ERIC has combined these terms under "Foster Care" and recommends using
population group terms such as "Parents" and "Children" to narrow the search to important
populations.
Obsolete Concepts:
An evaluation of usage may identify concepts that are no longer addressed in the current literature. For
example, “Fallout Shelters” rarely appears in the current literature. This Descriptor was replaced
with the broader concept of “Emergency Shelters.”
Obsolete Terminology:
Over time, the terminology used in the literature to address a concept may change, requiring updates to the
Thesaurus. For example, the term “Handicapped” was replaced by the term “Disabilities.”
Hierarchical Relationships:
Occasionally the hierarchy of terms (e.g., Broader, Narrower) needs adjustment. For example, the record for the
Descriptor "Context Effect" had identified "Influences" as a Related Term. The relationship was
changed, making "Influences" a Broader Term.
Scope Notes:
A review of the Thesaurus may identify Descriptors that require a change to the existing scope note or the
addition of a scope note to clarify usage. For example, a scope note was added to the term "Architecture"
indicating that the term refers to architectural structures, not information architecture.
Thesaurus Updates
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