[12241] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
UMLS for LCSH
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Mon Jun 8 20:07:43 1998
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 18:59:18 -0500
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
From: Gerry Mckiernan <GMCKIERN@gwgate.lib.iastate.edu>
Subject: UMLS for LCSH
UMLS for LCSH
I am greatly interested in learning about any current or pending
research that seeks to apply the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)
model for the creation of knowledge-bases and metathesaurus for Medical
Vocabularies to the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or other
controlled vocabularies. The UMLS was initiated more than ten years by
the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to enhance access to biomedical
literature. As part of this effort, a "Metathesaurus" was created to
integrate several medical vocabularies.
The "Metathesaurus" is organized by concept or meaning. Alternate
names for the same concept (synonyms, lexical variants, and translations)
are linked together. Each Metathesaurus concept has attributes that help
to define its meaning, e.g., the semantic type(s) or categories to which
it belongs, its position in the hierarchical contexts from various
source vocabularies, and, for many concepts, a definition. A number of
relationships between different concepts are represented. Some of these
relationships are derived from the source vocabularies; others are
created during the construction of the Metathesaurus. Most inter-concept
relationships in the Metathesaurus link concepts that are similar along
some dimension. The Metathesaurus also includes use information,
including the names of selected databases in which the concept appears,
and, for MeSH terms, information about the qualifiers that have been
applied to the terms in MEDLINE. Information on the co-occurrence of
concepts in MEDLINE and in some other information sources is also
included.
Additional information the "Metathesaurus" is available at
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/umlsmeta.html
Backgrond information about the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)
project as well as other part o fthe UMLS effort is accessible from:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/umls.html
The free Internet Grateful Med (Yep, Grateful _Med_
http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/) makes uses of the Metathesaurus for the Medline
database as does OMNI, the e-Lib Web clearinghouse of Medical Web
resources (http://omni.library.nottingham.ac.uk/umls/). In addition to
learning about formal actual or planned applications of the UMLS model
to LCSH (or a segment of LCSH), I would also appreciate hearing
speculation about the possibilities of such an application to the LCSH
domain.
As Always, Any and All citations, sources, contributions, critiques,
questions, concerns, comments, or queries are Most Welcome.
Joy
Gerry McKiernan Curator, CyberStacks(sm) Iowa State University Ames IA
50011
gerrymck=@iastate.edu http://www.public.iastate.edu/=CYBERSTACKS/
"The Best Way to Predict the Future is To Invent--or Co-Opt--It"
With Apologies Possibly to Peter Drucker
