Introduction to bibliometrics for construction and maintenance of thesauri: Methodical considerations

The paper introduces bibliometrics to the research area of knowledge organization – more precisely in relation to construction and maintenance of thesauri. As such, the paper reviews related work that has been of inspiration for the assembly of a semi‐automatic, bibliometric‐based, approach for construction and maintenance. Similarly, the paper discusses the methodical considerations behind the approach. Eventually, the semi‐automatic approach is used to verify the applicability of bibliometric methods as a supplement to construction and maintenance of thesauri. In the context of knowledge organization, the paper outlines two fundamental approaches to knowledge organization, that is, the manual intellectual approach and the automatic algorithmic approach. Bibliometric methods belong to the automatic algorithmic approach, though bibliometrics do have special characteristics that are substantially different from other methods within this approach.