Manually searching and collecting terminology commonly involves:
- using conventional resources - such as paper dictionaries, glossaries, etc.
- collecting representative texts (corpora) in one or more languages and in the particular subject field
- identifying "terminological units" (terms) (which could possibly change their meaning in the text or be influenced by the context)
- establishing concepts' relationships, such as hierarchical (specific/generic=sheepdog/mammal, part/whole=motor/automobile) or associative (action/tool=sawing/saw, cause/effect=heavy rain/flooding)
- providing definition, context, grammar information, equivalents in other languages for the terms found