Polyhierarchical Structure in a Thesaurus

Before you start your own thesaurus project it is important to notice the difference between a thesaurus and traditional folder trees, as well-known from Windows Explorer for example.

Although represented as a tree, a thesaurus is not just a simple tree but a semantic network.

An example is shown in the image below e.g. a concept labeled 'B-52' can be a sub-concept of 'New Era Drinks' as well as a sub-concept of 'Shooter'. In this case the 'B-52' concept exists only once in the system (represented by exactly one URI) although displayed in the tree at various positions.