RE: Compound concepts in a thesaurus structure

>I see SKOS as a dumb-down approach, just like Dublin Core is. Most of
the time you don't need the heavy weight and all the rules associated
with MARC21 or UniMarc to 
>describe vocabularies. You want a relatively simpler and understandable
format that 

All depends on the objective behind SKOS.  Generally speaking it is
better to make sure that dumbing down is a decision and choice
left to  those who sell/apply/implement systems and not for those
creating standards. I would also make sure that it can accommodate
both thesauri and classifications and subject heading systems in their
standard form or as authority files.
Provision for complexity does not stop ppl who want to do it  simply and
cheaply .. dumbing down stops those who have more expensive  and 
complex needs.
Fancy you should mention Dublin Core as I wanted to use it to illustrate
the opposite. Producing metadata is far too
expensive to be created only  to find out that it does not work in IR -
which is what was nasty surprise for many 
attracted to DC promise for cheep/simple/easy  - deciding to ignore
golde GIGO rule
 (garbage in garbage out). Which is why we have been flooded with of DC
application profiles, vocabularies, rules, guidelines - each 
project spending money and time to write its own metadata standard
within DC standard to fill the dumbed down gap, 
inventing qualifiers, syntax and refining semantic for generously empty
DC elements.  Having said that -
 DC had its positive role in teaching people outside bibliographic
domain about descriptive metadata role, cost and use.
SKOS appeared to me as a big step forward from what could be called
metadata infancy.

My suggestion to have possibility of choice and especially case 2)
[structured heading with specific tags] was precisely because this has
been missing up to now in 
MARC formats  which were created with Dewey and Library of Congress
Classification in mind - exclusively for  library systems that do not
use classification
for information retrieval anyway but rather for shelf arrangement which
means mainly American libraries. 
Both MARC21 (former USMARC Classification Format) and now UNIMARC
Concise classification 
format draft form 2001,  fail to provide structured heading for
classification which causes problems in searching and managing faceted
classifications. 
The poor exploitation of classification in library systems because of
the MARC being dumbed down is complaint that drags through the
literature since Wajenberg 
article in 1983 followed by Cochrane, Drabenstott, Liu, Goedert, Pollitt
etc. as you probably know yourself. 

As for SKOS I am not sure I understand  why 94(73) would be easier to
parse when downloading data than <tag>94<tag2>(73) both forms being
particular
to a specific systems and both can be interpreted only within this
identified system itself anyway. 
For instance udc number 94(73) is encoded in one of my databases as
c94f(73) .... why would SKOS be concerned with a form of my prefered
term????
The only problem is that if there is possibility to have compound terms
encoded and not encoded it should be possible to say which rule applies
for the given 
URI...

Aida

Received on Wednesday, 12 May 2004 15:51:08 UTC