Using the Estonian Subject Thesaurus in the Digital Environment

Abstract

This article reviews the possible uses of the Estonian Subject Thesaurus (EMS) as the major subject indexing tool in the digital databases of Estonian libraries. The article examines traditional resources like online catalogs and bibliographic databases but also more recent resources such as digital archives and institutional repositories. The availability of a universal thesaurus facilitates a wide reuse of records and is economical in terms of intellectual work. One further development trend of the EMS should be conformity to the contemporary Semantic Web standards like Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and Open Linked Data.