RE: How to use notations from classification schemes in SKOS

Lars
> > 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.
> Well, they are alternatives, at least in a way. What name 
> would you give them?
I call them "captions". Some people call them "class headings". They do
not behave in the same way as non-preferred terms because, as Leonard
has pointed out, sometimes they need to be interpreted in the light of
their parent class, and perhaps grandparent class. In other words, they
are often incomplete as names or labels.
>  
> > 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.
> If I understand you correctly, you're actually saying that we 
> need a new ontology for describing classification schemes. In 
> that case we need to redefine the skos quest, since "SKOS is 
> an area of work developing specifications and standards to 
> support the use of knowledge organisation systems (KOS) such 
> as thesauri, *classification schemes*, subject heading lists, 
> taxonomies, other types of controlled vocabulary, and perhaps 
> also terminologies and glossaries, within the framework of 
> the Semantic Web." [2] (emphasis mine).
That "mission quest" was adopted only recently. Previously the scope had
been narrower. I argued against the change at the time, but not enough
people were persuaded. And I can see there is a benefit in having one
scheme to cover all vocabulary types. But on the other hand, you lose
some precision in describing any one of the vocabularies. So now I'll
put the argument another way:

We already accept that ontologies are dealt with using OWL, rather than
SKOS Core. So if you have a separate scheme for ontologies, and
thesauri, why not also for classification schemes? Maybe Subject
headings lists too? Terminologies and glossaries should certainly be
separate, in my view. Now when you need to move between one of these
vocabulary types and another, what we are doing is mapping. So perhaps
SKOS Mapping, or an extension thereof, will handle it? Well that's just
a passing thought, which I have not thought through. My province is the
vocabularies themselves (with human users), and I leave it to the other
clever people on this list to work out how machines can communicate
them.

Over to you...
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
*****************************************************

Received on Wednesday, 15 February 2006 09:45:54 UTC