FAQ: suggestions

Here are some suggestions for your FAQ, based on questions I'd like  
better answers to. I've included sample answers, for a few of these,  
but you can probably come up with improved ones!

You might also think about particular audiences--e.g. librarians,  
programmers, ontologists/data modelers--and determine the most basic  
questions from those perspectives

-Jodi

What is a knowledge organisation system?

"The term knowledge organization systems is intended to encompass all  
types of schemes for organizing information and promoting knowledge  
management. Knowledge organization systems include classification and  
categorization schemes that organize materials at a general level,  
subject headings that provide more detailed access, and authority  
files that control variant versions of key information such as  
geographic names and personal names. Knowledge organization systems  
also include highly structured vocabularies, such as thesauri, and  
less traditional schemes, such as semantic networks and ontologies"

from
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub91/executive.html
which is part of
Hodge,G. (2000). Systems of Knowledge Organization: Beyond traditional  
authority files. Council on Library and Information Resources. http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub91/contents.html

What is RDF?

"RDF provides a general, flexible method to decompose any knowledge  
into small pieces, called triples, with some rules about the semantics  
(meaning) of those pieces."

RDF stands for Resource Description Framework

"The six documents composing the RDF specification tell us two things.  
First, it outlines the abstract model, i.e., how to use triples to  
represent knowledge about the world. Second, it describes how to  
encode those triples in XML.

Most of the abstract model of RDF comes down to four simple rules:

    1. A fact is expressed as a Subject-Predicate-Object triple, also  
known as a statement. It's like a little English sentence.
    2. Subjects, predicates, and objects are given as names for  
entities, also called resources (dating back to RDF's application to  
metadata for web resources) or nodes (from graph terminology).  
Entities represent something, a person, website, or something more  
abstract like states and relations.
    3. Names are URIs, which are global in scope, always referring to  
the same entity in any RDF document in which they appear.
    4. Objects can also be given as text values, called literal  
values, which may or may not be typed using XML Schema datatypes."

from
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html?page=2
which is part of
Joshua Tauberer (2006 July 26) What Is RDF http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html


Example of RDF & where used

Example of SKOS & where used
maybe pull out relevant examples from tutorials on http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/references 
  , e.g LCSH (interesting to librarians), Catch project, interesting  
to cultural heritage community