Thesaurus of Social Life in Colonial Latin America

PURPOSE

v The field of Latin American Studies in the United States is a dynamic, evolving field of study. Since its creation and development are relatively recent, there is a lack of available bibliographic tools for students and others interested in the body of work pertaining to this discipline.

v The purpose of this thesaurus is to try to meet this informational need by providing students and others who are interested in Colonial Latin American history with a list of controlled vocabulary terms to aid them in locating and storing information about this specific subject.

v The ultimate goal of this creation is that it will someday be part of a larger thesaurus on Latin American History, and hopefully part of an even larger thesaurus on Latin American Studies.

SUBJECT

v The thesaurus is domain-specific

v The thesaurus includes terms that are specific to social life in Colonial Latin America.

v The thesaurus also includes “marginal” terms that are not specific to life in Colonial Latin America. These terms are necessary to organize the thesaurus structure.

SCOPE AND STRUCTURE

v Existing thesauri on this specific subject or even the broader subject of Latin American History were not found.

v There were no classification schemes located on this subject other than what is provided by the Library of Congress.

v To facilitate the creation of the thesaurus, its scope will be limited to the Colonial Period in Latin American history. The span of this period, based on LC classification and authoritative literature, is from approximately 1498 to 1806.

v The time frame given separates this period, although not completely due to differing conquest periods in each region of Latin America, from the conquest and later from the independence movement.

v The areas that are being considered part of Latin America for the intents of this thesaurus are Central America, Mexico, and Spanish and Portuguese speaking areas of South America.

STRUCTURE

v The thesaurus is a structured vocabulary containing 363 terms. Terms in this thesaurus may be used to describe various aspects of social life in Colonial Latin America including land, labor, culture, ethnicity, etc.

v The conceptual framework of facets and hierarchies in this thesaurus is designed to allow a general structure for understanding social life in colonial Latin America.

v To this end, the structure includes the following subject categories:

o Culture

o Economics

o Ethnicity

o Geography

o Government

o Health

o Human rights

o Labor

o Land

o Natural resources

o Occupation

o Politics

o Religion

o Slavery

o Social problems

o Social systems

LANGUAGE AND ORGANIZATION

v The thesaurus follows Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19-1993).

v The thesaurus is primarily in English with some loanwords in Spanish. The thesaurus closely follows sections 3.6.7.1- 3.6.7.3 of the NISO Z39.19 standards on loanwords. Only the terms that have become naturalized by the English language as evidenced in concurring Latin American colonial history literature will be incorporated into the thesaurus.

v The controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus expresses single concepts using single or multi-word descriptors (3.1)

o Example: chile (single word descriptor)

§ cultural elite (multi-word descriptor)

v Multi-word descriptors were created according to 4.2-4.3 and are in proper form.

v Scope notes are included with every preferred term as many are loanwords from Spanish.

v Literary warrant (3.6.1.1) was utilized in term selecting and in term formation. Three well-known sources in the area of colonial Latin American were used for this purpose.

v The thesaurus utilizes single and multi-term descriptors, which represent a single, general concept, and does not attempt to express complex concepts. A user can use post-coordination to do so (4.1.2)

v As per 3.4.1 and 3.4.1.2.1 all terms are either nouns or adjectival noun phrases

v As per 3.5-3.5.2. Plural forms of words have been used when the question “how many?” could be asked. Singular forms have been used when the question “how much?” could be asked.

v As per 3.7.1 and 6.3.4 descriptors are all in lower case letters.

v Preferred descriptors are in bold and non-preferred are in italics.

v Relationships between descriptors are of the following kind:

o Equivalence relationships which link preferred terms to non-preferred terms by using Use and UF respectively. The types of equivalence relationships included synonyms (5.2.2), preferred spelling (5.2.3), quasi-synonyms (5.2.4), and translations.

§ Example: mestizas mestizos

USE mestizos UF mestizas

o Hierarchical relationships, which link descriptors to other terms expressing more general and more specific concepts (5.3). The types of hierarchical relationships that are included are genus-species and whole-part.

§ Example: castas mestizo

NT mestizo BT castas

o Affinitive/Associative relationships, which link descriptors in an effort to suggest to users additional descriptors for use in retrieval and indexing (5.4).

§ Example: measles smallpox

RT smallpox RT measles

SOFTWARE UTILIZED

v The thesaurus was created using software created by Multisystems. It is called MultiTes 8.0c. The software adhered to ANSI/NISO Z39.19 and allowed for the creation of various types of reports and displays. It was very user friendly and helpful in the creation of this thesaurus

DISPLAY

v The thesaurus is available on-line in an alphabetic arrangement at http://members.cox.net/jvargas12/Thesaurus/On-line%20Thesaurus%20Display/index.htm. An alphabetical display report is available at http://members.cox.net/jvargas12/Thesaurus/alphabetical%20display%20report.txt. A hierarchical display is also available at http://members.cox.net/jvargas12/Thesaurus/hierarchical display report.txt. A top term display is also available at http://members.cox.net/jvargas12/Thesaurus/top term display report.txt. Keeping in mind that the intended audience of this thesaurus is students and the general public, I feel that these three types of display best present the information in the clearest and most thorough fashion.

SOURCES USED

Bakewell, Peter. A History of Latin America: Empires and Sequels 1450-1930. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.

Boyer, Richard and G. Spurling. Eds. Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History 1550-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2000.

Burkholder, Mark A. and L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1998.

Library of Congress. Library of Congress Subject Headings. Washington: Library of Congress, 2002.

Marshall, Gordon. Ed. A Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Pres, Inc., 1998.

The Stooly Collection Thesaurus of the Victorian Water Closet. Online. Internet. 2002-03. Available < http://www.slais.ubc.ca/people/students/student-projects/M_Mclure/L512/Stooly_Thesaurus/Stooly_Thes_ILang.htm#Lang>

Unesco Thesaurus. Online. Internet. 2002-03. Available < http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/unesco/#copy>

Valk, Barbara G. Hapi Thesaurus, 1970-1999. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2000.