Re: [SKOS]: [ISSUE 44] BroaderNarrowerSemantics

Thanks to all for this gentle schooling in how important the
broader/narrower transitivity issue is--especially for the Library of
Congress Subject Headings. I must admit, I had no idea that the
broader/narrower semantics in LCSH were this flawed, and recognized as
such even when they were first introduced in 1988 [1]. I suppose if
the semantics around broader/narrower were declared to be transitive
the SKOS representation of LCSH would simply be making explicit this
implicit brokenness. Who knows it could be a tool for gradually
improving LCSH along the lines that Margherita mentions...but the
problems seem quite endemic.

I'm curious though: what are the disadvantages of having SKOS say
nothing about broader/narrower transitivity, and letting users define
these triples if they are important for their application? This would
allow looser KOS like LCSH to be represented in roughly the same way
as more rigorous KOS. Developers who desired inferencing across
broader/narrower could then add triples stating that transitivity. Is
the perception that this would drastically reduce the interoperability
of SKOS data, and if so how?

//Ed

[1] Dykstra, Mary. "LC Subject Headings Disguised as Thesaurus",
Library Journal, March 1, 1988, p 42-46.

Received on Monday, 17 December 2007 18:25:14 UTC