FW: Recommended reading: feedback on SKOS from Doug Tudhope and Ceri Binding from University of Glamorgan

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Aida Slavic [mailto:aida@acorweb.net]
>> Sent: 24 February 2004 17:23
>> Just in case you are not familiar with this....
>>
>> D. Tudhope and C.Binding may be referring to the terminology
>> adopted by UK CRG (Classification Research Group). In this
>> framework mutually exclusive categories of concepts are
>> organized on the level of subfacets and not on the level of facets.

Just a word to clarify this. My understanding of this is that facets are 
mutually exclusive (a concept cannot belong to more than one) and that 
the concepts within a facet can be arranged into arrays, each array 
having a specified "characteristic of division" (e.g. "vehicles _by_ 
number of wheels").

 >> CRG operates with terms of
>> - BROAD FACETS (defined subject area)
>> - FACETS (13 fundamental facets: thing - kind - part -
>> property - material - process - operation - patient - product
>> - by-product - agent - space - time )
>> - SUBFACETS(array)
>> - FOCI(i.e. concepts)

I think it is better not to use the expressions "broad facets" or 
"subfacets", because this implies that these are kinds of facets. This 
is not accurate because they do not share all the characteristics of 
facets, in particular mutual exclusivity. I therefore prefer to use the 
expressions "subject areas" (or "subject  categories" or "subject 
classes") and "arrays".

We have a further complication with the definition of facet. I prefer 
the definition used in the draft British Standard that Stella referred 
to, where she said:

>Some facets commonly used in  thesauri include Activities, Agents, 
>Objects, Materials,  Organisms, Places, Times. Normally, a concept that 
>belongs to  one of these facets cannot belong to any of the others, 
>because they are such fundamentally different things.

In this definition facets are fundamentally different categories of 
concepts, assuming that we interpret "agents" as meaning "people and 
organisations" and ignore the fact that people are organisms. An object 
is presumably distinguished from a material by having a shape.

However, the list of "13 fundamental facets" that Aida quotes above 
(thing - kind - part - property - material - process - operation - 
patient - product - by-product - agent - space - time) is not based on 
just what concepts _are_ but is partly dependent on the _role_ they play 
in a subject string representing a combination of concepts.

The same concept could, in different strings, be a material, a product 
or a by-product, for example, so, as Stella points out, mutual 
exclusivity then breaks down.

I wonder, therefore, whether we should avoid using the term "facets" for 
the 13 elements in the list above, and say just that this specifies a 
useful citation order of concepts according to their roles.

It is very difficult to decide which definition should claim the right 
to the term "facet", but I think it is important to pin it down to a 
single meaning, as I'm sure that its varied and loose use in the past 
has contributed to a lot of confusion and lack of clarity in 
communication.

Leonard
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Received on Thursday, 26 February 2004 06:44:19 UTC