Re: Relationships involving collections

Dear Alasdair et al.,
Dare I toss an additional question at this one: the standards group at Max
Planck Institute Nijmegen and I are working on a standard for the use of
persistent identifiers in language and knowledge resources. We're in the
throes of preparing a document for circulation in ISO. It's a bit rough at
the moment, but we hope to have it ready for circulation in the next couple
weeks. The questions you raise about vocabularies, collections (complex
resources), and as well as parts and fragments (we're hashing over the
differences between the two!) all play a role here. Our goal is to be able
to reference (and I use the term very carefully because actionable
references are in the end where we are headed) from one resource to another,
whether it is from one vocabulary or termbase or lexical resource to another
or from one embedded point in a resource to an embedded point in another. We
are concerned about maintaining permanent persistent links in an environment
where the "physical" location of things and their configurations are dynamic
and constantly changing. A major utility of this approach with regards to
semantic processing is that termbases, ontologies, vocabularies, and all
manner of knowledge resources are expensive and challenging to produce, and
they frequently require the collaboration of subject field specialists and
knowledge organization specialists. At the same time subject field experts
are creating termbases or vocabularies or standards or metadata registries
on their own where they are carefully crafting rigorous definitions that can
be used to anchor or validate concepts. Our notion is that if we know such
definitions exist, instead of just quoting them (which is the current
practice in terminology management, for instance) we could point to them
with persistent identifiers, thus creating a network of knowledge references
that could then be used to anchor these concepts when referenced from other
knowledge resources. Theoretically at least this kind of web inside the Web
would have the potential to  accelerate the growth of effective semantic
services. Furthermore, and from an information management standpoint very
effectively, this functionality enables us to avoid building relational
structures inside MDRs or termbases: we envision building rdf environments
that stand alone outside the MDR, termbase, etc. and can be referenced then
from other external knowledge resources and serve as switching stations so
to speak referencing the definitive information to which they are linked.
In the next few weeks I've got to collect specific examples of where the use
of PIDs could be functionally effective with regard to the various
standards. I've been thinking through my own TC 37 environment, but I'd
welcome any input that anyone has from the SKOS or general vocabularies
side.
Best regards
Sue Ellen


On Tue, Feb 5, 2008 at 5:03 AM, Alasdair Gray <agray@dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> With regard to the latest skos reference working draft, how should
> mappings between vocabularies that involve collections be performed?
>
> In the astronomy vocabularies that I have been working with, I have come
> across several instances where I either need to directly relate 2
> collections or a collection with a concept. One such example is for
> relating the vocabulary of astronomy and astrophysics journal keywords
> (A&A) [1] with the international astronomical union thesaurus (IAUT)
> [2]. Below are brief snippets of the two vocabularies.
>
> A&A
> Concept: "Sources as function of wavelength"
>  NT Collection: "Gamma Rays"
>    NT Concept: "Gamma ray bursts"
>       Concept: "Gamma ray observations"
>       Concept: "Gamma ray theory"
>
> IAUT
> Concept: "Radiation"
>  NT Concept: "Gamma rays"
>
> I would like to assert
> A&A:"Gamma Rays" skos:exactMatch IAUT:"Gamma rays"
>
> In fact, as I have typed up this example I wonder if the A&A vocabulary
> snippet I have given is in fact valid in the new skos reference as is
> declares a collection to be a narrower term and this goes against the
> domain and range declarations for the BT/NT relationships.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alasdair
>
> [1]
>
> http://www.aanda.org/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=191
> [2] http://msowww.anu.edu.au/library/thesaurus/english/
>
> --
> Dr Alasdair J G Gray
> http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~agray/ <http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Eagray/>
>
> Explicator project http://explicator.dcs.gla.ac.uk/
>
> Office: F161
> Tel:     +44 141 330 6292
>
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>    17 Lilybank Gardens,
>    University of Glasgow,
>    Glasgow,
>    G12 8QQ, UK.
>
>
>
>


-- 
Sue Ellen Wright
Institute for Applied Linguistics
Kent State University
Kent OH 44242 USA
sellenwright@gmail.com

Terminology management: There is unfortunately no cure for terminology; you
can only hope to manage it. (Kelly Washbourne)