Re: Relationships involving collections

Hello again,
Leonard's comment about collections is interesting. If this is what you are
thinking about, maybe my "complex resources" isn't quite that relevant. We
are thinking of collections not as collections of concepts (which in a way
happens whenever you have a set of siblings or children), but rather as
collections of objects, such as multiple vocabularies -- what Gayle Hodge
calls federated resources -- that can be interconnected using persistent
identifiers.
Bye for now
Sue Ellen

On Tue, Feb 5, 2008 at 5:46 AM, Leonard Will <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk>
wrote:

>
> On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 at 10:03:09, Alasdair Gray <agray@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
> wrote
> >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.
>
> Well, I don't know about SKOS, but the structures above do not conform
> to the thesaurus standard BS8723-2. They should be something like this:
>
>
> [A&A]
> radiation sources
>    (radiation sources by wavelength)
>    NT  gamma radiation sources
>        visible radiation sources
>        microwave radiation sources
>
> gamma radiation sources
>    RT gamma rays
>
> gamma radiation
>    USE gamma rays
>
> gamma rays
>    NT  gamma ray bursts
>    RT  gamma ray observations
>        gamma radiation sources
>        gamma ray theory
>
> [IAUT]
> radiation
>    NT gamma rays
>
> You have shown "Gamma rays" as "Collection", but I hope that nobody
> would interpret it as that, in SKOS or elsewhere. It looks like an
> ordinary concept, and doesn't become a "collection" just because it has
> some narrower terms. As I understand it, "collection" is the SKOS term
> for what the thesaurus standard BS8723-1 calls an "array": a group of
> sibling terms. An array may be preceded by a node label showing a
> "characteristic of division", e.g. (... by wavelength) in the above
> example. Node labels are just interpolated explanatory labels; they do
> not represent concepts and they do not have relationships.
>
> You can't really make mappings between an array and a concept. If you
> want to map the whole group, you should probably be mapping their parent
> term. In this case the concept "gamma rays" occurs in both thesauri, and
> as its definition is presumably the same in both there should be no
> problem in making a direct mapping.
>
> It looks as though the thesauri you are working with are not well
> structured, having invalid NT relationships, so problems are inevitable.
> :-(
>
> Leonard Will
>
> --
> Willpower Information       (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
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> L.Will@Willpowerinfo.co.uk               Sheena.Will@Willpowerinfo.co.uk
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>
>
>


-- 
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)