The development and structure of the Chinese Thesaurus for subject indexing

摘要

In the information age, a thesaurus still remains as an important retrieval tool. The purposes of this article are to review the development and nature of the Chinese Thesaurus (CT), and to examine its organizational structure and functions in Chinese information indexing. As the largest, and most comprehensive indexing retrieval devices for Chinese language, the Chinese Thesaurus and later the Chinese Classified Thesaurus (CCT) have played key roles in the standardization of Chinese retrieval language, and contributed greatly to the modern development of knowledge organization and information processing in China.