Vocabulary and Taxonomy Issues When Searching Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Health LiteratureT health literature

Information documented in published articles relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health issues is generally reported in a free-text or keyword format. This creates inaccessibility to bibliographic data in the health sciences and education-themed databases. The purpose of this poster is to describe the gaps in existing vocabularies and taxonomies, including the UMLS and MedlinePlus Consumer Vocabulary for the health sciences literature and the ERIC Thesaurus for education-themed literature, which are the primary resources used to retrieve literature on health issues for LGBT individuals. The poster will demonstrate more formal semantics and a working taxonomy that could be included in developing indices that would integrate data from all fields of medicine and biology as well as health education data.