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

Forwarded to the list (message from Aida Slavic):

(Aside: we need to figure out how to do facets properly - I've got a strong
feeling that the way we do it in SKOS-Core currently isn't quite right, 'tho
I don't know how to fix it yet).

Al.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aida Slavic [mailto:aida@acorweb.net] 
> Sent: 24 February 2004 17:23
> To: Miles, AJ (Alistair) 
> Subject: RE: Recommended reading: feedback on SKOS from Doug 
> Tudhope and Ceri Binding from University of Glamorgan
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> CRG opperateS 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)
> 
> Sub-facets allows for a structured building of hierarchies 
> within any fundamental facet.
> 
> example
> 
> Level of FACETS : 1 PROPERTIES, 1 PROCESSES, 2 MATERIALS 3 
> OPERATIONS etc.
> 
> FACET 1 Property
> 	ARRAY 1(subfacet) Properties of existence
> 	ARRAY 2           Properties of range
> 					General. Universal
> 					Properties of regularity
> 		[FOCUS 1 = concept]       	Regular. Usual. Ordinary
> 		[FOCUS 2 = concept]		Irregular. 
> Unusual. Extraordinary
> 		[FOCUS 3 = concept]		Simple. Simplified
> 		[FOCUS 4 = concept]		Complex
> 					...
> 				...
> 	ARRAY 3		Properties of magnitude
> 
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org 
> > [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Miles, AJ 
> > (Alistair)
> >
> > Sent: 24 February 2004 13:22
> > To: 'public-esw-thes@w3.org'
> > Subject: Recommended reading: feedback on SKOS from Doug 
> Tudhope and 
> > Ceri Binding from University of Glamorgan
> >
> >
> >
> > Forwarding this to the list.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Douglas Tudhope [mailto:dstudhope@glam.ac.uk]
> > Sent: 05 February 2004 16:04
> > To: Miles, AJ (Alistair)
> > Cc: cbinding@glam.ac.uk
> > Subject: feedback on RDF schemas for thesauri and simple KOS 
> > *pre-release*
> >
> >
> > Alistair
> >
> > SKOS-CORE looks  a very promising start.
> > As promised (belatedly - sorry) some initial comments on these from 
> > our point of view (bearing in mind that we don't have much 
> experience 
> > in RDF).
> >
> > 1. As you know, we support the idea of allowing for more 
> precise KOS 
> > representations. We should also try to maintain compatability with 
> > traditional standards. One rationale for the current 
> standard's set of 
> > thesaurus relationships is that they are at quite a cost/effective 
> > level of generality for many applications, allowing for some 
> > user/indexer variation in concept useage and relevance 
> judgements. The 
> > proposed scheme does seem to
> > allow for both 'traditional' KOS and more precise, formal 
> constructions
> > which is good.
> >
> > 2.  It is important to have some notion of facets but we 
> don't think 
> > that current version quite captures it. The scheme correctly takes 
> > 'facets' to represent fundamental categories in the sense of 
> > Ranganathan, the CRG, BSI standard etc (as opposed to subfacet 
> > indicators). Yes, each concept is a member of one and only 
> one facet. 
> > But in this sense, I'm not sure it's useful to simply 
> 'treat facets as 
> > concepts'? Eg
> > >>>
> > - <rdf:Property rdf:ID="inFacet">
> >   <rdfs:label>member-of-facet</rdfs:label>
> >   <rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="#broader" />
> >   <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Facet" />
> >   <rdfs:comment> This property indicates that a concept is 
> a member of 
> > a facet. A concept may have only one inFacet property. This 
> property 
> > is a sub-property of the 'broader' property. Thus faceted 
> conceptual 
> > structures may be reduced to simple hierarchical displays by 
> > applications that do not comprehend facets.</rdfs:comment>
> >   </rdf:Property>
> > >>>
> > a) "This property is a sub-property of the 'broader' 
> property. "  -- 
> > In particular, we're not convinced about making this relationship a 
> > type of the broader relationship. I'd suggest that's not really the 
> > semantics? Conceivably subclass/superclass or set 
> membership might be 
> > better solutions?
> >
> > b) In any case, we don't quite see how this would realise the 
> > degenerate case you describe for non-faceted schemes. Each 
> concept is 
> > immediately related by the BT-subtype relationship to its 
> Facet. How 
> > does that help you with the degenerate case, where 
> presumably you want 
> > the Top of Hierarchy to
> > stand in as a facet? A subclass would do just as well?
> >
> > c) The degenerate case is less important than being able to 
> facilitate 
> > more advanced reasoning with faceted schemes. Thus we might wish to 
> > use OWL or another language to express facet synthesis rules, or 
> > relate thesaurus facets to a higher level ontology. There 
> needs to be 
> > a sufficiently clear distinction between facets and member 
> concepts - 
> > use of the broader relationship concerns us here.
> >
> >
> > 3. Broader/Narrow - We assume that the OWL representation would 
> > formally express the Inverse relationship? However, in the 
> RDF there 
> > is nothing to capture the BT/NT connection apart from the 
> comment. Is 
> > it useful to make the RDF as self sufficient as possible? 
> Eg would it 
> > be useful to introduce a new type of Semantic Relationship called 
> > HierarchicalRelationship with BT and NT underneath? We can see this 
> > may have drawback of creating additional
> > complexity but suggest as a consideration.
> >
> >
> > 4. Not everyone considers Related (RTs) to be necessarily symmetric 
> > (eg the AAT does not). Could 'symmetric' not be an optional 
> property 
> > of the relationship?
> >
> > 5. Is there any possibility of defining at least one subtype of 
> > Related? Eg a Partitive (see below)?
> >
> > 6. Good to have subtypes of the hierarchical relationships but note 
> > that broader/narrowerPartitive is often restricted to 
> members of the 
> > same hierarchy (see Aitchison&Gilchrist). In other cases, a Related 
> > relationship type is recommended.
> >
> >
> > 7. There is little notion here of the Entry Vocabulary, and the 
> > various relationships between concepts and terms. Was there 
> a reason 
> > for this? It's a very important aspect of a thesaurus and 
> may(?) be a 
> > critical issue for gaining acceptance of  a standard in some 
> > traditional thesaurus circles. It
> > take it the rationale is 
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/RdfThesaurus - "Suggested
> > solution 2:: We don't bother with them. Instead we offer the
> > recommendation
> > that all acronyms be included as possible labels for a concept.
> > Plural forms
> > probably don't need be included as modern stemming 
> algorithms can identify
> > the root of the term. "
> >
> > a) I see the general point and agree that the longterm solution is 
> > making connections with standards in the Linguistic 
> community. However 
> > we would tend to argue that relying only on labels results in an 
> > impoverished model of a thesaurus? Essentially a thesaurus 
> contains a 
> > pragmatic domain-specific lexicon in the entry vocab, equivalence 
> > relationships and scope notes. It's
> > one of the reasons why the thesaurus has been such a useful 
> tool over many
> > years and arguably a weakness of some purely concept-based 
> 'ontological'
> > efforts. Could we bring in some version of the Equivalence 
> relationship to
> > SKOS, or alternatively have more properties regarding terms?
> >
> > b) For example, there are various subtypes of equivalence 
> > corresponding to parts-of-speech relationships, US/UKalts, types of 
> > synonyms, antonyms (even) and these might be distinguished in some 
> > future super-KOS systems. Replacing
> > the Equivalnce relationship with a simple 'bag of labels' 
> would lose that
> > possibility.
> >
> > c) Also - in some cases a term will be considered 
> Equivalent to more 
> > than one concept (perhaps with different degrees of 
> confidence). Again 
> > that becomes less clearly stated.
> >
> >
> >
> > 8. Anyway, be interested to know your thoughts on all this - it's 
> > great that someone is proposing possible standards and 
> trying to reach 
> > concensus. The general thrust of the SKOS RDF schema is great. What 
> > are your plans for progressing it?
> >
> > One way of possibly progressing/discussing some of this 
> effort might 
> > be in (or associated with) an NKOS workshop at ECDL'04 in 
> Bath, this 
> > September. Marianne Nielsen is aiming to propose a workshop on 
> > user-centred issues and this might be a second (or parallel 
> > mini-meeting) theme?
> >
> > Hope to get a chance to talk at JISC workshop in London at 
> some point 
> > if you are attending for SWAD-Europe demo?
> >
> > regards
> >
> > Doug, Ceri
> >
> >
> > Douglas Tudhope
> > Reader, School of Computing
> > University of Glamorgan
> > Pontypridd CF37 1DL
> > Wales, UK
> >
> > Tel  +44 (0) 1443-482271
> > Fax  +44 (0) 1443-482715
> > dstudhope@glam.ac.uk 
> http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/dstudhope
> > Editor : The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Miles, AJ (Alistair)" <A.J.Miles@RL.AC.UK>
> > To: <NKOS@dli2.nsf.gov>
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 1:41 PM
> > Subject: RDF schemas for thesauri and simple KOS *pre-release*
> >
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > I offer these schemas as a pre-release, to get some 
> initial feedback
> > and
> > > response on their design.
> > >
> > > SKOS-Core <http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/2003/11/21-skos-core> 
> (RDF schema
> > for
> > > encoding thesauri and other simple knowledge organisation systems 
> > > e.g. taxonomies and classification schemes.)
> > >
> > > SKOS-Mapping 
> <http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/2003/11/21-skos-> mapping> (RDF 
> > > 
> schema for expressing mappings between 
> concepts from different
> > > thesauri.)
> > >
> > > This work is ongoing in the context of the SWAD-Europe project [1]
> > [2].
> > >
> > > Yours,
> > >
> > > Alistair Miles.
> > >
> > > [1] SWAD-Europe Thesaurus Activity 
> > > <http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/SWAD/thesaurus.html>
> > > [2] Semantic Web Advanced Development for Europe project 
> > > <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/>
> > >
> > >
> > > CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
> > > Building R1 Room 1.60
> > > Fermi Avenue
> > > Chilton
> > > Didcot
> > > Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
> > > United Kingdom
> > >
> > > Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
> > > Telephone: +44 (0)1235 445440
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 08:59:53 UTC