Designing a thesaurus to give visibility to the historical archives in the Archivo del Reino in Valencia

Abstract

This article describes the process of constructing a thesaurus based on original historical documents located in the Archivo del Reino de Valencia, one of the most important historical archives in Spain. After examining precedents, we discuss the methodology used and its application. The aim of the project was to provide visibility to information contained in these historical documents which would otherwise have remained inaccessible and to do so in the clearest, most rigorous, and most useful way possible for both the specialized user and the general public. The use of information technology as a management tool is not as common in archives, especially historical archives, as in other documentation areas such as libraries. A pilot project was therefore set up to create an intranet support for managing four specific historical archives containing documents dating from the 13(th) to the 20(th) centuries. The most important part of this project was that of exploring the viability of constructing a thesaurus to become part of the automated program for archive description and checking.