Wednesday 23 May 2007

CFP Knowledge Society: new spaces for its construction, Habana, Cuba

Courtesy of María López-Huertas:

Call for papers for
"The international conference on Information "Knowledge Society: new spaces for its construction"" - INFO' 2008
21-25 April 2008
Palacio de Convenciones de La Habana, Cuba

The conference has two main purposes: an international meeting on information and an
international workshop on business intelligence and knowledge management in companies.
Organizers: El Instituto de Información Científica y Tecnológica (IDICT) del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente de la República de Cuba.

SKOS Use Cases and Requirements: Working Draft

From SKOS discussion list:

Request for Comments: SKOS Use Cases and Requirements: Working Draft

2007-05-16: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Use Cases and Requirements [1]. Knowledge organization systems, such as taxonomies,thesauri or subject heading lists, play a fundamental role in information structuring and access. These use cases and fundamental or secondary requirements will be used to guide the design of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organisation System), a model for representing such vocabularies. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. We would greatly appreciate your comments and feedback on this Working Draft, which should be submitted to the SWD mailing list [2].
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-ucr/
[2] mailto://public-swd-wg@w3.org

JISC UK Repositories Summer School 2007, Totnes, Devon

Repositories Summer School 2007
Dartington College, Totnes, Devon

Wednesday June 27th – Friday June 29th

The JISC Repositories Support Project (RSP) is delighted to announce the launch of the UK’s first summer school for prospective and new managers of institutional and subject repositories.

This unique three day residential course will deliver a comprehensive overview of the practical challenges and solutions to effective repository implementation. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage in scholarly debates on current repository theory and gain hands-on experience with repository software and tools. A range of interactive seminars, practical workshops, lectures and panel sessions will be delivered by a range of expert practitioners drawing from projects such as DAEDALUS, TARDIS, SHERPA, Repository Bridge and the RSP. These focused sessions will be supplemented by a series of networking sessions and social engagements, all of the delightful surroundings of Dartington Hall.

Tuesday 22 May 2007

Automatic Analysis of Dewey Decimal Classification Notations

An interesting work on automatic decomposition of Dewey numbers has been done by Ulrike Reiner. This is a continuation of the research previously undertaken by S. Liu (1996): Decomposing DDC synthesized numbers".
Ulrike presented reported on this research at the The 31st Annual Conference of the German Classification Society on Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications in Freiburg, on 8th March 2007.

We hope to see the printed version of the paper titled "Automatic Analysis of Dewey Decimal Classification Notations" in the conference proceedings, as well.

An excerpt from the abstract:

"The complex DDC system (Ed. 22) allows to synthesize (to build) a huge amount of DDC notations (numbers) with the aid of instructions. Since the meaning of built DDC numbers is not obvious - especially to non-DDC experts - a computer program has been written that automatically analyzes DDC numbers. Based on Songqiao Liu’s dissertation (Liu (1997)), our program decomposes DDC notations from the main class 700 (as one of the ten main classes). In addition, our program analyzes notations from all ten classes and determines the meaning of every semantic atom contained in a built DDC notation. The extracted DDC atoms can be used for information retrieval, automatic classification, or other purposes."

Similar work on decomposition of Universal Decimal Classification numbers was reported by Gerhard Riesthuis at the International ISKO conference in 1998.:

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1997) "Decomposition of complex UDC notation", Knowledge organization for information retrieval : proceedings of the Sixth International Study Conference on Classification Research, London, 16-18 June 1997. The Hague : FID, 1997. (FID 716), 139-143.

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1998) "Decomposition of UDC-numbers and the text of the UDC Master Reference File", Structures and relations in knowledge organization : proceedings of the Fifth International ISKO Conference, Lille, 25-29 August 1998. Edited by W. Mustafa Elhadi, J. Maniez, S. Pollitt. Würzburg : Ergon Verlag, 1998. (Advances in knowledge organization 6), 221-228.

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1998b) Zoeken met woorden. [doctoral thesis]. Amsterdam : Leerstoelgroep Boek-, Archief- en Informatiewetenschap, 1998. (BBI-reeks nr 6).

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1999) "Searching with words : re-use of subject indexing", Extensions & Corrections to the UDC, 21 1999, 24-32.

Thursday 17 May 2007

A Chinese Project: Research and Implementation of Knowledge Organizing System Integration & Service Architecture

The project, Research and Implementation of Knowledge Organizing System Integration & Service Architecture with funds of RMB 8.4million (about 0.7 million UK pound) supported by the state, is one of the projects catalogued in the Key Technologies R&D Program of Chinese 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2009) in China. It aims to dynamically improve the knowledge organization system (KOS) in the key filed of engineering technologies, to establish the system for multi-domain thesaurus integration, dynamically maintenance and services of semantic tools, such as open classification schema, thesaurus and ontology. The KOS Integration & Service Architecture as an infrastructure will provide a supporting semantic services for information resources processing.
This research project includes construction of integrated vocabulary resources, development of semantic tools, construction of semantic services system and some fundamental research of S&T domain ontology etc. The construction of integrated vocabulary resources means the construction and maintenance of multi-domain engineering and technological thesaurus; development of semantic tools means the development of assistant tool for classification/thesaurus system; construction of semantic services system means research on integration system of KOS framework and implementation of services system. Fundamental research means acquisition and reasoning research on S&T domain ontology.
At present, about 30 full-time researchers, led by the principal of Qiao Xiaodong, are working on this research project. Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China (ISTIC) is responsible for the research project. ISTIC is the organizing and coordinating institution for Chinese Subject Thesaurus, a comprehensive searches tool for science and technology, which embodies 81,198 subject items, including 68,823 formal subject items and 12,375 informal subject items. Chinese Subject Thesaurus is the leading tool for subject indexing, subject searches, catalogue organizing and indexing. In recent years, ISTIC is responsible for lots of high-level national scientific research programs in the aspect of knowledge organizing system. ISTIC, in 2006, was responsible for Automatic Mapping Research of Information Resources Category on the Basis of Governmental Affair Ontology, one of the programs for the National Natural Science Foundation, which mainly consists of the construction of governmental affair ontology and the research of automatic mapping among multi-categories of governmental affair information resources. Besides, ISTIC has completed the Logic Semantic Expression & Calculation Model Research on Natural Language Processing (2002-2004) for the National Natural Science Foundation and accomplished its own projects, Automatic Construction of Ontology on the Basis of Text and Design and Accomplishment of Managing System of Language Materials on Knowledge Acquisition. These programs help ISTIC form a stable group of intelligent and skillful researchers and develop technological reserves for the present project.

Wednesday 16 May 2007

The North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, June 14-15, 2007

From ISKO-l and ISKOI lists:

Greetings Knowledge Organization researchers:

North American thinkers have commented on a number of changes and innovations in Knowledge Organization research. Beghtol, Mai, Smiraglia, and Svenonius have all noted a shift in knowledge organization research strategies and focus in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The task of laying the groundwork for future work is
imminent.

Likewise, the time is ripe for enhanced communication among Knowledge Organization researchers in North America. We are a diverse set of researchers interested in asking basic and applied questions on how knowledge is organized and how such organization can be improved through research. As ISKO members we are also are interested informing a North American chapter in order to share research findings, mentor students and maintain continuous conversations across the large landmass of North America.

That is why we invite you to Toronto, Ontario for the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, June 14 and 15, 2007.

Programme, registration, and accommodation information available:
http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/iskona/events.html

Tuesday 15 May 2007

Classaurus

Courtesy of F. J. Devadason.

An article explaining the concept and construction of a 'classaurus' is now available online:
"Online construction of alphabetic classaurus: a vocabulary control and indexing tool" by F. J. Devadason (the online version of the article published in Processing and Management, Vol. 21(1985); No.1; p 11-26)

The term 'classaurus' in the meaning of an indexing language/tool that combines classification and thesaurus is first introduced by Bhattacharyya:

BHATTACHARYYA, G. (1982) "Classaurus : its fundamentals, design and use", Universal classification : subject analysis and ordering systems : proceeding of the 4th International Study Conference on Classification Research, 6th Annual Conference of Gesellshaft für Klassifikation, Augsburg, 28 June - 2 July 1982 : Vol. 1. Edited by I. Dahlberg. Frankfurt : Indeks Verlag, 1982, 139-148.

The idea is similar to the one of thesaurofacet introduced earlier by J. Aitchison ("The thesaurofacet : a multipurpose retrieval language tool", Journal of Documentation, 26 (3) 1970, 187-203).

Many thanks to F. J. Devadason for making the text of his article available in this way. It would be great if we would get wider access (subject to copyright permission) to excellent articles by his teacher and mentor G. Bhattacharyya such as the one mentioned above or at least one of the following:

BHATTACHARYYA, G. (1979) "Fundamentals of subject indexing languages", Ordering systems for global information networks : proceedings of the Third International Study Conference on Classification Research held at Bombay, India, during 6-11 January 1975. Edited by A. Neelameghan. Bangalore : DRTC : FID/CR and Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, 1979. (FID 533), 83-99.

BHATTACHARYYA, G.; RANGANATHAN, S. R. (1978) "From knowledge classification to library classification", Conceptual basis of the classification of knowledge : proceedings of the Ottawa Conference, October 1st to 5th 1971. Edited by J. A. Wojciechowski. New York; München; Paris : K.G. Saur, 1978. 119-143.

Saturday 5 May 2007

CFP: XII Conference on Information and Documentation Systems, October 2007, Zaragoza, Spain

From ISKO-l mailing list:

The XII Conference on Information and Documentation Systems (IBERSID 2007, 1-4 October 2007, Zaragoza, Spain) is open for contributions in English to the special meeting on "Ontologies for information retrieval" (3-4 October 2007). It is entitled: "Ontologies: principles and practice. A challenge and an opportunity for the information and knowledge professional communities". Invitation is open for long/short papers,posters or proposals for workshops.
Deadline for proposals is 31 May 2007.
Notification for acceptance 4 June 2007.
Full paper are expected by 30 June 2007.

The programme and conference information are available at http://www.ibersid.org. The preliminary programmme for the special "Ontologies for information retrieval" meeting is available at:
http://cicic.unizar.es/ibersid_en/Ediciones/Ibersid2007/programaEN.htm