RE: SKOS Mapping Vocabulary Specification query

George,
Gosh, it never occurred to me that people would want to distinguish
singular/plural etc. But then with BS 8723 ( and to some extent with
SKOS too) we are coming from an environment in which we assume that
documents (items) have been indexed by human indexers using a controlled
vocabulary so that they can identify which are the important concepts in
the document and call each such concept by one consistent name. In other
words, singulars, plurals and other variants are deliberately brought
together in one name, *so long as they have the same meaning*.

However, if you were thinking of vocabularies to help with free text,
then you might well want to distinguish singulars and plurals. Or you
might be a linguist looking at patterns of term usage, and want to
analyse frequency of occurrence of the different usages. 

If folksonomies are included among the vocabularies, that's different
again.

So before deciding how to do the mapping, it would be useful to have a
clear vision of who is the user, what are they mostly trying to do, have
the searchable resources been indexed with a controlled vocabulary, and
are the users trying to retrieve concepts or just words. Also, do the
users understand what a controlled vocabulary does for them.

Have fun
Stella

*****************************************************
Stella Dextre Clarke
Information Consultant
Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8RR, UK
Tel: 01235-833-298
Fax: 01235-863-298
SDClarke@LukeHouse.demon.co.uk
*****************************************************



-----Original Message-----
From: George Macgregor [mailto:george.macgregor@strath.ac.uk] 
Sent: 16 August 2006 12:53
To: 'Stella Dextre Clarke'; 'G.hopmans'
Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: RE: SKOS Mapping Vocabulary Specification query


Hi Stella, Gabriel

Thanks for your emails - much appreciated.

> Well, this may not be exactly what you are asking about, but we hope 
> it will be useful for a lot of applications.  Let me know if you'd 
> like to see a draft.

This sounds very useful indeed and it will definitely inform our
approach. Thanks!  We will keep everyone posted on developments! 

The big question for HILT relates to the type of approach.  Recent
approaches adopt a conceptual appraisal of matching, and this is
certainly consistent with how SKOS functions and current thinking
generally (such as the recent Renardus project).  Yet, a large
proportion of mapping work in the past considered this inadequate and
adopted an approach of distinguishing matches at a finer level of detail
(e.g. singular/plural matches, spelling variations, etc., in addition to
concept matches and exact matches).  Similarly, previous work in HILT
(much of it anecdotal,
admittedly) appeared to infer that users required such detail to
understand why they had received particular mappings and to enable them
to formulate similar queries in the future.  It was also necessary to
allow users to disaggregate huge result sets which might normally (under
SKOS for example) be conceptually equivalent but which in reality
subsumed various types of 'exact match'.  For example, to-the-letter
exact matches or matches with spelling variations or intervening
characters, and so forth. 

Clearly this area lacks sufficient user research as there are numerous
assumptions in the literature as to what users might find useful! :-)
Perhaps this is something we can investigate this during the project
lifetime...

Thanks to all.

George
----------------------------------------------
George Macgregor,
Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR),
Department of Computer & Information Sciences,
University of Strathclyde, Livingstone Tower,
26 Richmond Street, Glasgow, UK, G1 1XH
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4752
fax: +44 (0)141 548 4523
web: http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/
--------------------------------------------

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stella Dextre Clarke [mailto:sdclarke@lukehouse.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: 15 August 2006 20:49
> To: 'George Macgregor'
> Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org
> Subject: RE: SKOS Mapping Vocabulary Specification query
> 
> George,
> 
> You may like to consider the mapping types in the forthcoming BS 8723 
> Part 4. This standard will define mappings as "statements of the 
> relationships between the terms, notations or concepts of one 
> vocabulary and those of another". It will describe the following types

> of mapping:
> - equivalence (comparable to the equivalence relationship in a
> multilingual thesaurus)
> - hierarchical (comparable to the BT/NT relationship in a thesaurus)
> - associative (comparable to the RT/RT relationship in a thesaurus)
> The main emphasis in the standard is on equivalence mappings.
> 
> It will describe degrees of equivalence, acknowledging that some 
> proposed equivalents are partial or inexact (but may nonetheless be 
> acceptable in appropriate contexts) without establishing distinct 
> mapping types for the more and less exactly equivalent respectively. 
> It will also suggest a method of handling one-to-many equivalences, 
> i.e. where a concept in one of the vocabularies is represented by a 
> combination of concepts in the other vocabulary, and for this 
> situation two different combination types are described.
> 
> Well, this may not be exactly what you are asking about, but we hope 
> it will be useful for a lot of applications.  Let me know if you'd 
> like to see a draft.
> 
> All the best
> Stella
> 
> *****************************************************
> Stella Dextre Clarke
> Information Consultant
> Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8RR, UK
> Tel: 01235-833-298
> Fax: 01235-863-298
> SDClarke@LukeHouse.demon.co.uk
> *****************************************************
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of George Macgregor
> Sent: 15 August 2006 15:59
> To: public-esw-thes@w3.org
> Subject: SKOS Mapping Vocabulary Specification query
> 
> 
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> At the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) we are in the 
> process of researching and developing a M2M mapping-based terminology 
> server. This work is being undertaken via the third phase of the 
> High-Level Thesaurus project (HILT) [1].  HILT III will offer web 
> services access (via SOAP) and plans to use SKOS Core for wrapping 
> terminology sets for sending. In particular, this would entail the use

> of the SKOS Mapping Vocabulary Specification.
> 
> Previous phases of HILT indicated that a degree of specificity was 
> required when characterising mapping match types.  This was necessary 
> to facilitate improved results ranking and to provide users with 
> adequate relevance feedback.  Vocabulary switching work conducted by 
> Chaplan [2] identified 19 separate mapping match types and noted the 
> difficulty in using conceptual approaches to denote equivalence.  More

> recently, Liang et al. [3] have found problems in implementing the 
> SKOS matches for mapping between disparate thesauri.  This was 
> attributed to difficulties pertaining to the match type definitions 
> and their ability to accommodate more complex matches.
> 
> Clearly there is a need to offer a simple conceptual approach to 
> specifying equivalence - and this is what the SKOS MVS does; however, 
> we would be keen to know the status of the SKOS MVS, whether any 
> extensions are being
> proposed and, if so, their nature.   Since there has not been
> significant
> public comment on the SKOS mapping types, we would also be keen to 
> hear comments and whether people consider the MVS to be sufficiently 
> specific. Our current thoughts are that we might extend the SKOS MVS 
> to incorporate extra match types, but we would want to do this 
> collaboratively and in a way that can accommodate any foreseeable (or
> potential) additions to the SKOS MVS.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> George
> 
> References:
> 
> [1] HILT: http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/
> 
> [2] Margaret A. Chaplan, Mapping Laborline Thesaurus terms to Library 
> of Congress Subject Headings: implications for vocabulary switching, 
> Library Quarterly 56(1) (1995) 39-61.
> 
> [3] A. Liang, M. Sini, Chang Chun, Li Sijing, Lu Wenlin, He Chunpei 
> and J. Keizer, The mapping schema from Chinese Agricultural Thesaurus 
> to AGROVOC, 6th AOS Workshop - Thesaurus enrichment and facilitating 
> interoperability through mapping (2005).  Available: 
> ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/008/af241e/af241e00.pdf
> 
> ----------------------------------------------
> George Macgregor,
> Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR),
> Department of Computer & Information Sciences,
> University of Strathclyde, Livingstone Tower,
> 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow, UK, G1 1XH
> tel: +44 (0)141 548 4752
> fax: +44 (0)141 548 4523
> web: http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 16 August 2006 14:03:17 UTC