Re: Relationships involving collections

On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 at 13:50:24, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss@gbv.de> wrote
>
>Leonard Will wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>I don't see the problem: Of course you can create an array named "gamma 
>rays" it makes a lot sense.

"Naming" an array is not something recognised in the British Standards 
for thesaurus construction. "Gamma rays" is the label for a concept, 
which may have a set of narrower concepts which we call an array, but 
"gamma rays" is not the name of the array, it is the label of the parent 
concept.

>Arrays and skos:collections

are these the same thing?

>do not imply any semantics for retrieval - they are just groups because 
>it's useful for browsing, showing, printing... the hierarchy.

They imply that all the concepts grouped in an array are siblings, 
sharing the same parent concept.

>You can group concepts by anything you want.

I would say "you can group sibling concepts into arrays using any useful 
characteristics of division"

>> 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.
>
>That's right. The mapping takes place between concepts so you map to 
>the parent node and members of a collection.
> BUT in practise you just want to see or set ONE mapping relation to a 
>collection instead of MANY to its parent and members. It's more one the 
>level of user interfaces.

I don't think that you would map to the members of a collection (array) 
as well as to the parent node. The members of the array should all be 
sub-types of the parent, as indeed are their children and any lower 
level concepts. Mapping to the parent concept therefore automatically 
includes all its descendants. A mapping should be to the closest match, 
either to the parent or to one or more more specific concepts, possibly 
in a Boolean combination.

Regards

Leonard

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Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2008 19:54:35 UTC