The construction of silence

This paper looks at the way elements of the information ‘industry’, such as libraries and indexing services, act as ‘gatekeepers’ of information. They play an important role in controlling the interpretation of history by the selection of articles, the choice of language to provide access points (such as in thesauruses) and the application of subject headings. Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS) subject headings as described in the APAIS thesaurus (1990) are used an example of this process.