About the event

Once upon a time, the thesaurus was venerated. It marked a breakthrough in the retrieval of very specific needles of information hidden in large haystacks. Some of the veneration rubbed off on to the trained information professionals, who alone mastered the occult art of using it to concoct effective search strategies. All this was in the time before we had a computer on every desk, when a collection of 10,000 articles was considered large, and long before the Google era.

But now, who has the patience to consult a complicated thesaurus? Only a dedicated few. Has the thesaurus passed its sell-by date? And even its use-by date? Join us at the Great Debate, where you’ll get a chance to air your own views, and perhaps win over some voters. Can you point to the way ahead - whether it involves effective thesaurus use behind the scenes, or bypasses all vocabulary aids on the route to retrieval success?