TEMAS: a Thesaurus of Early Modern Documentary
                        Forms*

                                Valerie Vrancken1[0000-0003-0085-8341]
                                     1
                                       Belgian State Archives
                                 Valerie.Vrancken@arch.be



        Abstract. Research indicates that many archive users struggle with the interpre-
        tation of archival descriptions. This is a multi-layered problem, ranging from a
        lack of understanding of the concept of archival representation and its limits, to
        a lack of acquaintance with archival terminology and documentary forms. To
        support archive users in this latter area, the Belgian State Archives has devel-
        oped TEMAS, a bilingual thesaurus (Dutch/French) that offers definitions for
        and maps (quasi-)synonyms of more than 450 early modern documentary
        forms. In doing so, TEMAS brings together the scattered knowledge on early
        modern documentary forms and makes it easily accessible for archive users.
        Due to technical and budgetary constraints, the first version of the thesaurus
        was developed as a relational database in Access, which can be downloaded as
        open data from the online SODHA repository (www.sodha.be). In the coming
        years, the Belgian State Archives will rework this database into an open linked
        data thesaurus using multilingual thesaurus software that will facilitate data
        sharing and reuse. Linking TEMAS to Records in Contexts ± the new descrip-
        tion standard of ICA ± is also a track that will be explored in the coming years.


        Keywords: Thesaurus, Archival Description, Early Modern Record Types,
        Documentary Form, Accessibility.




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