130 likes | 208 Views
WHO-CEHA Inter-Water Thesaurus and other WHO Sources for Health and Environment Terminology. Mazen Malkawi Technical Information Officer WHO/EMRO/CEHA. CEHA. Regional Centre for Environmental Health Activities
E N D
WHO-CEHA Inter-Water Thesaurus and other WHO Sources for Health and Environment Terminology Mazen Malkawi Technical Information Officer WHO/EMRO/CEHA
CEHA • Regional Centre for Environmental Health Activities • Established in 1985 in Amman, Jordan by the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean EMRO • Its Mandate is to promote Environmental Health through technical support for national capabilities and programmes in the Member Countries of the Region • For more details http://emro.who.int/ceha
Afghanistan Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) Syria Lebanon I.R. Iran Iraq Tunisia Jordan Morocco Kuwait Pakistan Libya BAA Egypt UAE QAT SaudiArabia Oman Yemen Sudan Djibouti Somalia
CEHANET • Regional Environmental Health Information Network established by CEHA in 1988 in collaboration with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). • Mandate is to improve access to reliable and relevant environmental health information in the Region
CEHANET Approaches • Regional EH Information Centre and Information Services • Development of Information Systems and Tools • Production of Regional and National Information • Human Resources Development • Establishment of EH Information Centres • For details http://www.emro.who.int/ceha/cehanet.asp
CEHA Inter-Water Thesaurus • Based on the IRC Inter-water Thesaurus for Community Water Supply and Sanitation • It is a controlled and structured vocabulary for use in indexing, storage, and retrieval of information • Bilingual English/Arabic • Includes 2200 descriptors and about 1000 non-descriptors • Based on printed version as mostly its users are small size information centres that are using CDS/ISIS. • Electronic version is available for larger centres using Mini-ISIS
Thesaurus Structure • Presentation is alphabetical and incorporating both descriptors and non-descriptors in one sequence • Each entry (word block) contains all available details including all relationships • Each block gives the whole hierarchy of the descriptor both at superordinate and subordinate levels for up to seven levels • The Arabic equivalent of the top term in the word block is presented • Subject categories (facets) have also been added to the top term to indicate the term’s affiliation
Thesaurus Subjects • A Water Supply • A1 Water Resources • A2 Water Treatment • B Water Quality • C Water Use • D Water and Wastewater Transport • E Sanitation • E1 Wastewater Treatment • E2 Waste Disposal and Utilization • F Health • F1 Environment • F2 Food
Thesaurus Relationships • Equivalence (Synonyms) It indicates that one term from among a number of synonyms has been selected as descriptor while the others are considered non-descriptors • Hierarchical (Broader and Narrower) Multiple levels have been used to indicate hierarchical levels (4 broader and 4 narrower) • Related (Associative) • Scope Notesare added to some descriptors to define, explain or limit the term
Thesaurus Maintenance • As the thesaurus updating is of utmost importance equal to its construction, CEHA has decided to cooperate with IRC and its Focal Points in the Region on this Regard. • Users were requested to send their suggestions for addition, deletion or modification to CEHA for centralization of the updating process • Special form was used for this purpose. There are suggestions for adding about 400 descriptors
Other Supporting Tools • Subject Analysis Handbook • CEHANET Procedures Manual • Training course on EH information Networking • The above tools were used for training about 100 trainers and 300 users in the Region
Unified Medical Dictionary • The Unified Medical Dictionary (UMD) is a Multilingual Medical Dictionary (Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish). • Includes more than 150,000 terms with an update facility • Available in Printed, on CD-ROM and through Internethttp://emro.who.int/umd • Includes several specialized dictionaries and CEHA is looking for support to finalize its EH one
Medical Subject Headings (MESH) • It is the system designed and used by the National Library of Medicine (NLM)for assigning subject headings to books and journals articles in the medical sciences. • It is available in Arabic • Looking for Collaborators to expand the Environmental Health part