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New version of CESSDA ELSST

The latest version of the CESSDA European Language Social Science Thesaurus (ELSST) was released on 14 September 2021. The previous version dates from June 2020.

ELSST is currently available in 14 languages (including the source language English), with translation of Preferred Terms 98-100% complete in each target language: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. Out of the 14 available languages, all have been updated, with the exception of Spanish, Danish and Czech.

The UK Data Service manages ELSST on behalf of CESSDA, in collaboration with the Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD). This work includes managing the thesaurus system; developing and updating the source language (English) content; and training and supporting translators.

Content development work for the new release has focused on the revision of the Environment hierarchy, and of terms related to sexuality and gender. The latter work is still in progress so the terms and structure in the thesaurus may undergo some further changes.

The following changes were made to the English source language version:

  • 19 new concepts
  • 4 deleted concepts
  • 9 relabelled Preferred Terms
  • 37 new Entry Terms
  • 11 deleted Entry Terms
  • 22 new or changed Definitions
  • 7 new or changed Scope Notes
  • 54 changes to the Broader/Narrower Concepts
  • 58 changes to Related Concepts
  • 32 new or changed History Notes

In the last 12 months the ELSST team has been training translators to use VocBench, our new thesaurus management system. The ELSST Content Development and Technical teams have also worked closely with the system developers of both VocBench and Skosmos, the publishing platform, and implemented the latest versions of the software as they have become available. The UK Data Service Humanities and Social Science Electronic Thesaurus (HASSET) also uses the same platforms.

Coming soon: Further language version of ELSST

We are pleased to report that a Hungarian version of ELSST is currently being prepared by the Research Documentation Centre, Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. A new release of ELSST is planned for early 2022 to include the new language version.