Draft of ISO 25964-1 - Now available

Draft of ISO 25964-1 "Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies. Thesauri for information retrieval”

Work has been under way since May 2008 to revise and extend the international standards for thesauri, ISO 2788 and ISO 5964. The updated content of these two standards, plus other material needed to support interoperability, will be combined in a new standard ISO 25964, as follows:

ISO 25964. Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies
Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval
Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies

Part 1, officially numbered ISO/DIS 25964-1, has been released as a draft available for public comment until the end of February 2010.

Part 1 covers monolingual and multilingual thesauri. As well as updating the entire content of ISO 2788 and ISO 5964, coverage includes:
guidelines for thesaurus management software;
a data model for monolingual and multilingual thesauri;
recommendations for exchange formats and protocols.
An XML schema for data exchange is included as an informative appendix, and is available free of charge here. Please click the “comments” link on this web page, to give your feedback on the draft schema.

The whole standard may be viewed online. You have to register on the site, but there is no charge for registration, and it is easy to submit comments on each clause, whether you are in the UK or not. Alternatively a hard copy is available from BSI at a price of £36 (just £18 for BSI members). Place your order online (where the draft is listed under an alternative number of 09/30165649 DC).

A copy of the whole draft may also be obtained from any of the national standards bodies which are members of ISO, the International Organization for Standards.

Development of the standard is managed by a Working Group known as ISO TC46/SC9/WG8, which has participants from 15 countries and is led by Stella Dextre Clarke of the UK. The Secretariat is provided by NISO (USA). WG8 is now actively working on Part 2 of the standard, which will provide guidance on mapping between vocabularies.

See official website. Further information may be found in the ASIS&T Bulletin, and in an article in the Technology Watch Report.

IVOA recommending SKOS

International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) has published a proposal of recommendation entitled " Vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory" for public review:

A few interesting excerpts from the document explaining the context and the rational:

"Astronomical information of relevance to the Virtual Observatory (VO) is not confined to quantities easily expressed in a catalogue or a table. Fairly simple things such as position on the sky, brightness in some units, times measured in some frame, redshifts, classifications or other similar quantities are easily manipulated and stored in VOTables and can currently be identified using IVOA Unified Content Descriptors (UCDs). However, astrophysical concepts and quantities use a wide variety of names, identifications, classifications and associations, most of which cannot be described or labelled via UCDs.

There are a number of basic forms of organised semantic knowledge of potential use to the VO. Informal “folksonomies” are at one extreme, and are a very lightly coordinated collection of labels chosen by users. A slightly more formal structure is a “vocabulary”, where the label is drawn from a predefined set of definitions which can include relationships to other labels; vocabularies are primarily associated with searching and browsing tasks. At the other extreme are “ontologies”, where the domain is formally captured in a set of logical classes, typically related in a subclass hierarchy. More formal definitions are presented later in this document.

An astronomical ontology is necessary if we are to have a computer (appear to) “understand” something of the domain. There has been some progress towards creating an ontology of astronomical object types to meet this need. However there are distinct use cases for letting human users find resources of interest through search and navigation of the information space..."

"As the astronomical information processed within the Virtual Observatory becomes more complex, there is an increasing need for a more formal means of identifying quantities, concepts, and processes not confined to things easily placed in a FITS image (Flexible Image Transport System), or expressed in a catalogue or a table. We propose that the IVOA adopt a standard format for vocabularies based on the W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). By adopting a standard and simple format, the IVOA will permit different groups to create and maintain their own specialised vocabularies while letting the rest of the astronomical community access, use, and combine them. The use of current, open standards ensures that VO applications will be able to tap into resources of the growing semantic web. Several examples of useful astronomical vocabularies are provided, including work on a common IVOA thesaurus intended to provide a semantic common base for VO applications."

Vocabulary mapping - CrissCross project

Colleagues working on vocabulary mapping may be interested in CrissCross project.

In CrissCross the subject headings of the German Subject Headings Authority File (SWD) are mapped to notations of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). The method chosen for the mapping procedure is a directional one: the German subject headings function as initial vocabulary, the DDC as target classification. Appropriate DDC numbers are added directly to the particular SWD data record. The SWD Subject Groups serve as a starting point for the creation of work packages.

CrissCross is a project financially supported by the German Research Foundation and being executed by the German National Library in cooperation with the Cologne University of Applied Sciences.

It aims to create a multilingual, thesaurus-based and user-friendly research vocabulary that facilitates research in heterogeneously indexed collections.

More detailed information about CrissCross can be found on the CrissCross website. Now an English version of the website is online: http://www.fbi.fh-koeln.de/institut/projekte/CrissCross/index_en.html.

Call for Comments: SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference; SKOS Primer

The W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group is pleased to announce the publication of a Last Call Working Draft for the Simple Knowledge Organisation System Reference (SKOS): http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-reference-20080829/

Our Working Group has made its best effort to address all comments received to date, and we seek confirmation that the comments have been addressed to the satisfaction of the community, allowing us to move forward to W3C Candidate Recommendation following the Last Call process.

The Working Group solicits review and feedback on this draft specification. In particular, the Working Group would be keen to hear comments regarding any features identified at risk, and from those implementing (among others):

* Editors: editors that either consume or produce SKOS;
* Services: vocabulary services that provide access to vocabularies using SKOS;
* Checkers: applications that check whether the constraints on SKOS vocabularies have been violated.

Comments are requested by 3 October 2008, at which time the Working Group intends to close Last Call. All comments are welcome and should be sent to public-swd-wg@w3.org; please include the text "SKOS comment" in the subject line. All messages received at this address are viewable in a public archive.

The Working Group intends to advance the SKOS Reference to W3C Recommendation after further review and comment. This Last Call Working Draft signals the Working Group's belief that it has met its design objectives for SKOS and has resolved all open issues.

The Working Group has also published an update of the companion SKOS Primer: http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-primer-20080829/

The Working Group expects to revise this Primer while the SKOS Reference is undergoing review and eventually publish the Primer as a Working Group Note. Please see also: http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-reference-20080829/#status http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-primer-20080829/#Status

Alistair Miles, Senior Computing Officer
Image Bioinformatics Research Group Department of Zoology
University of Oxford
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman

Sean Bechhofer
School of Computer Science,
University of Manchester
Web: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/people/bechhofer

ISKO UK Event - Sharing Vocabularies on the Web via SKOS

We would like to invite you to the next ISKO UK event entitled Sharing Vocabularies on the Web via Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) which will take place on 21 July 2008 at University College London.

Predictions for the Semantic Web are heavily dependent on the ability of computers to reason and communicate using controlled vocabularies. SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) development aims to bring forward these capabilities.

SKOS names a family of standards being created to express the semantic structure of controlled vocabularies (thesauri, classifications, subject headings etc.) so that they can be accessed and interpreted by programs and services. As a draft Web standard, SKOS Reference provides a data model that can be used as a vehicle for the development, use and sharing of knowledge organization systems across information sectors and within the Semantic Web framework.

Aware of the growing importance of SKOS, ISKO UK in cooperation with School of Library, Archives and Information Studies at UCL has invited a group of experts to introduce this standard, explain its status, potential and scope. Our speakers are involved in the development and application of SKOS and related standards and are hoping to provoke some interesting discussion.

Members of the W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group, Alistair Miles and Antoine Isaac and Bernard Vatant from Mondeca, will explain the role of SKOS in the Semantic Web, the ideas behind SKOS and the way it is intended to function. The convenor of BSI committee IDT/2/2/1 Stella Dextre Clarke and collaborators Leonard Will and Nicolas Cochard will discuss the data model of the recently developed BS 8723 standard known as DD8723-5, focusing on its relationship with SKOS and interoperability issues. Ceri Binding and Douglas Tudhope from University of Glamorgan will present their AHDS-funded Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources project, raising issues for practical applications of SKOS and SKOS-based terminology web services.

This event, the third in ISKO UK's KOnnecting KOmmunities series, promises a fascinating glimpse of the future of controlled vocabularies. No one involved or interested in the development, management or implementation of controlled vocabularies can afford to miss it. Book your place on the event's page.

Presentations available from Metadata and Digital Repositories SIG meeting

Courtesy of Neil Fegen

The Metadata and Digital Repositories SIG held its first meeting of 2008 on 12th Feberuary at Birkbeck, London. The meeting centred around project updates from the JISC Repositories and preservation programme.

Speakers:

Sarah Currier & Lara Whitela "DC-Education Application Profile: Use Case Gathering Session"

Mike Taylor "Using Standards to Make Vocabularies Available"

Koraljka Golub "EnTag: Enhanced Tagging for Discovery"

Sarah Currier "Easy Desktop Deposit for intraLibrary: and implmentation of SWORD"

Scott Wilson "FeedForward Project"

David Flanders "SOURCE project: A (Repository) Bulk-Migration Service"

Presentations and mp3 are available here.

Presentations and audio recordings from the ISKO Seminar "Tools for Knowledge Organization Today"

ISKO UK Seminar Tools for Knowledge Organization Today was held on 4th September 2007 at University College London.

The Seminar exploried current developments in knowledge organization systems, standards and the work of groups in the knowledge organization field, such as Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS) and British Computer Society - Knowledge, Information, Data and Metadata Management (BCS-KIDMM).

Slideshow files and audio recordings of the talks given by Stella Dextre Clarke, Douglas Tudhope, Vanda Broughton and Conrad Taylor, are now available from the event's website

Keywords & the e-Government Metadata Standard

Rumour has it that the use of the Subject element of the e-GMS for keywords is to be deprecated. The e-GMS v. 2 supported the use of keywords to extend the specificity of the pretty unspecific GCL in use at the time. The e-GMS v3.0 (29 April 2004) still referenced the GCL but appeared to restrict keywords to a controlled set, saying:

"These should be taken from a controlled vocabulary or list."

However, that policy seems to have been changed in the e-GMS v3.1 (29/8/2006) which says:

"Uncontrolled values (e.g. keywords from an uncontrolled list) can also be used if they will make it easier for people to find the resource."

No wonder there's confusion! Does anyone know whether there is any truth in the rumour?

Invasion of the Knowledge Organizers

London, England, 22 August 2007.

The authorities in London have issued a warning that the city is likely to be hit by several swarms of Knowledge Organizers next month. The first swarm will make landfall on 4 September, when the UK Chapter of ISKO hold their half-day seminar Tools for knowledge organization today.

Disorganized knowledge workers are advised to take extra care on 12 September, when mixed swarms of knowledge managers and data managers are forecast to hit the Charing Cross area. First to arrive will be those attending the afternoon seminar of NetIKX - the Network for Information and Knowledge Exchange - at the DWP in John Adam St., where Stella Dextre Clarke will be speaking on Standardising the language of information and knowledge management – the Agony and the Ecstasy.

Following in the early evening of the 12th., another swarm is expected to descend upon the British Computer Society's premises in Southampton Street for a meeting entitled Information, data and metadata: why they need to be managed. The meeting marks the launch of Keith Gordon's new book Principles of Data Management: Facilitating Information Sharing.

After a brief respite, we are warned that a further swarm is due to hit the Covent Garden area on 17 September in the form of the BCS KIDMM (Knowledge, Information, Data and Metadata Management) day conference KIDMM: MetaKnowledge Mash-up 2007. Since this gathering comprises a number of different species which do not normally swarm together, visitors to the area are advised to be on their guard against unpredictable behaviour.

So, make sure you get these in your diary:

04 September: Tools for knowledge organization today
12 September: Standardising the language of information and knowledge management – the Agony and the Ecstasy
12 September: Information, data and metadata: why they need to be managed
17 September: KIDMM: MetaKnowledge Mash-up 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.

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.

ISKO News Section - include commercial events?

I know that I am not the only one among ISKO UK's membership, but I am a member of the North American taxonomy mailing list TaxoCop. This list is primarily oriented towards the role of taxonomies (and related approaches to structuring information) in the corporate information environment. There is an associated Wiki. The list is run by Seth Earley of Earley and Associates, whose business is taxonomy building and deployment, although TaxoCop is not run as a commercial operation.

From time to time, the TaxoCop community run conference calls on specific topics. Some of these are free, but more often they cost USD50 per person (plus the call costs, of course). TaxoCop have announced such a conference call for March 28th, entitled 'Taxonomy and KM'. I am wondering if we wish to carry notices of such items in the News section on the ISKO site?

Although the TaxoCop conference calls are charged, they are not really commercial events, and may therefore qualify to appear in our News section. However, there are a number of events around the topic of taxonomies which are run as commercial events, such as the Taxonomy conferences which Ark Group (used to?) run, and the very interesting sessions at the Online Conference last November involving Joseph Busch, Jayne Dutra, Tom Reamy and others. Should we carry news items for such commercial events also, where they are relevant?

I have no wish to interfere with editorial policy for our Web site, but it seems to me that we need to clarify our position in this respect. What do other members think?

Regards,

Bob

New KO-related books from Chandos

For anyone who has not seen the latest catalogue from Chandos Publishing, it contains a number of books relevant to our field. Some are new (and even yet-to-be-published) and some have been out for a while.

Not least is the eagerly-awaited book by Patrick Lambe, "Organizing Knowledge: Taxonomies, knowledge and organizational effectiveness" (ISBN 1-84334-227-8).

Others include:

• Information Architecture for Information Professionals. Dr. Susan Batley.
• Knowledge, Information and the Business Process. Liz Taylor.
• Challenges of Knowledge Sharing in Practice: A Social Approach. Gunilla Widen-Wulff.
• E-Journal Invasion: A Cataloger's Guide to Survival. Helen Heinrich.
• Theory and Practice of the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Dr. M. P. Satija.
• Indexing: From Thesauri to the Semantic Web. Pierre de Keyser.
• Metadata for Digital Resources: Implementation, systems design and interoperability. Muriel Foulonneau & Jenn Riley.
• Descriptive and Subject Cataloguing: A Workbook. Dr. Jaya Raju.
• Classification in Theory and Practice. Dr. Susan Batley.

Further details available on the Chandos Web site via an author search.

Bob

Pedagogical vocabularies and Dublin Core metadata

A brief update on the activities of Dublin Core - Educational Community.
The DCMI Education Working Group is focusing on developing the DC-Ed Application Profile and vocabularies for this AP - primarily vocabularies for 'learning object type' and 'instructional method'.
To start with they will draw from The JISC-CETIS Pedagogical Vocabularies Review report which already contains a number of relevant vocabularies. These will now be the subject of more detailed scrutiny.

Today, Sarah Currier, the group's moderator, announced their new wiki.

typology of controlled vocabularies

The other day, there was a discussion on 'general types of controlled vocabularies' on the SKOS list. Some texts were proposed that cover this issue:

- "Ontology metadata framework, a doctoral thesis in which there is a typology of controlled vocabularies based on G. Hodge's "Systems of Knowledge Organization for Digital Libraries"

- NISO 39.19 - Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and management of Monolingual Thesauri

- Terminology Services and Technology JISC state of the art review

[All of these are listed in the ISKO UK topics and standards pages respectively.]

I was wondering... if we wish to read about the typology of indexing languages where should we look? Are some of these still relevant?

"Subject approach to information" by A.C. Foskett (1999)
"Languages of indexing and classification" by W. J. Hutchins (1975)
"Abstracting and Indexing" J. Rowley (1988)
"Indexing and Abstracting in Theory and Practice" by F. W. Lancaster (2003)
"Indexing languages and Thesauri"(1974) or "Organizing Information" (2006) by Dagobert Soergel
"Subject analysis and indexing: theoretical foundation and practical advice " by Robert Fugmann? (1993)

or e.g.:
Documentation - methods for examining documents, determining their subjects, and selecting indexing terms: international standard 5963. Geneva, International Standard Organization, 1985

... etc.