RE: How to use notations from classification schemes in SKOS

I'd just like to point out that MeSH is not a classification scheme.
Because it is not a classification scheme, you cannot expect its
notation to have the function of uniquely identifying a concept. One of
its functions is simply to allow preferred terms to be sorted into the
right position in tree structures. And since the structure is
polyhierarchical that means multiple notations are often required.

In a real classification scheme (such as DDC or UDC) the notation is the
unique identifier of the class, whereas the caption is not necessarily
unique (two different classes, with different notations, could both have
the same caption).

Therefore I would repeat Andy's warning that the notation in a
classification scheme corresponds to the preferred term (preflabel) in a
thesaurus. The captions do not correspond exactly to non-preferred
terms, so I'm not sure whether it is a good idea to treat them as
altlabel. I suppose it depends on how they are interpreted by the user,
or user application.

Now, how to handle it in SKOS... back on my old hobby horse: if you try
and make one model work for several different types of application, you
may have to make the model quite complicated and you can end up with
confusion.

Cheers
Stella

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Stella Dextre Clarke
Information Consultant
Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8RR, UK
Tel: 01235-833-298
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-----Original Message-----
From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alistair Miles
Sent: 13 February 2006 15:27
To: Bernard Vatant
Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: Re: How to use notations from classification schemes in SKOS



Hi Bernard,

If we had a 'notation' property for use with typed literals, you could 
express this constraint (albeit informally) ... E.g. a concept cannot 
have more than one 'notation' from the 'alpha-2' notation datatype.

I don't think it would be appropriate to express a similar constraint in

the general case (no more than one 'notation' per 'notation datatype'), 
however, as I believe some classification schemes allow more than one 
'notation' for each concept (e.g. MeSH?).

Cheers,

Al.

Bernard Vatant wrote:
>   +1 for Andrew's requirement
> 
> The example I'm working on currently is languages, as by ISO-639, 
> trying
> to figure a SKOS representation e.g. of the 20 official languages of
the 
> European Community, each one having a prefLabel in each other, and ISO

> codes. In ISO-639 source, there is a label in French and English,
which 
> looks indeed more like an informative 'caption', whereas the real 
> "prefLabel(s)" are codes ... with the extra issue of having up to
three 
> distinct codes, alpha-2, alpha-3B and alpha-3C for each language, 
> questioning the unicity of prefLabel ...
> 
> Would it make sense to define any code or notation type as a 
> subproperty
> of skos:prefLabel, with the unicity constraint applied to each of
those 
> subproperties independently, so that the same concept could have
several 
> prefLabel(s), but at most one for a given subtype, e.g. at most one
DDC 
> number, at most one OCLC number, at most one ISO-639 alpha-2 code, 
> whatever (note all those are language-independent), and at most one 
> untyped prefLabel (in any language).
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Bernard
> 
> Houghton,Andrew a écrit :
>>> From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org 
>>> <mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org>
>>> [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Svensson, Lars
>>> Sent: 13 February, 2006 09:07
>>> To: Danny Ayers
>>> Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org <mailto:public-esw-thes@w3.org>
>>> Subject: AW: How to use notations from classification schemes in
SKOS
>>>
>>> Errr, well yes. Maybe my quest wasn't quite clear. What I
>>> need is not any kind of identifier, but a label. An example: 
>>> the class 025.43 in the Dewey Decimal Classification has the 
>>> caption "General classification systems". I want to express 
>>> "General classification systems" AND "025.43" as 
>>> human-readable labels. Something like
>>>
>>> [ns declarations omitted]
>>> ddc:025.43 rdfs:type skos:Concept ;
>>> 	skos:prefLabel "General classification systems"@en ;
>>> 	skos:notation "025.43" .
>>>
>>>     
>> BTW, as far as the editors of the DDC are concerned, 025.43 is 
>> considered the "preferred" label, not the caption.  The caption is 
>> considered an "alternate" label where there will be one or more for 
>> each translation.
>>
>>
>> Andy.
>>
>> Andrew Houghton, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. 
>> http://www.oclc.org/about/ 
>> http://www.oclc.org/research/staff/houghton.htm

-- 
Alistair Miles
Research Associate
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
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440

Received on Monday, 13 February 2006 17:50:40 UTC