Web-accessible thesauri

[JHENDERSON]

With thesauri you need to be watchful of several things.  First, the name 
Roget has gone the way of Webster in entering the public domain, and the label 
Roget signifies nothing about the thesaurus's compilers or publisher.
Because the 1911 Roget's thesaurus is in the public domain, and has become 
part of the Gutenberg Project.  If a thesaurus is not otherwise labeled, there 
is a good chance that that is the one being used.

ARTFL Project's ROGET'S Thesaurus 
(http://home.netscape.com/home/whats-new.html)
is the thesaurus I have used most often. (But I still prefer a hard copy 
thesaurus.) It is a searchable full text Roget's Thesaurus version 1.02 
(supplemented: July 1991) released to the public domain by MICRA Inc and the 
Gutenberg Project [which I think means it is based on the 1911 version]. The 
interface works well. You can search by keywords in the text or by headwords.  

Plenty of other thesauri are available, including several in special subject 
areas, and as part of many gopher ready reference sites.  Just try any of the 
search engines or link to any of the many library "reference" pages.  

John Henderson
Ithaca College Library
jhenderson at liber.ithaca.edu