Re: [ISSUE-77] [ISSUE-48] Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] Skos subject properties are deprecated

Hi!

Antoine suggested that there are 2 options of which he prefers the second:
1. SKOS is about KOS representation only, and it is not 
feasible/desirable have SKOS representing the indexing link between 
(possibly very numerous) resources and the concepts they are about. The 
functions are just different.

2. Accessing the resources that are the "extension" of a concept can be 
very interesting for manipulating the concepts, e.g for designing 
standard applications.

I am, however, not sure whether SKOS should be the choice between but 
rather support both functions - as they complement each other.

In practice KOS may be used:

a) as information exchange standard - when several repositories are 
'translating' their local subject markers into a shared set of 
standardized KOS concepts to facilitate cross collection search. Many 
taxonomies are created for this specific purpose.

In this scenario concepts are understood to mean no more or less than it 
is expressed by KOS published as a standard. In this case the set of 
subject markers linked to resources is a subset of a published KOS standard

b)as indexing language for organization and access to local collection - 
in which case the meaning of concepts taken from standard KOS list is 
being 'interpreted', sometimes extended or even twisted to include or 
exclude something prescribed by local indexing guidelines.
The change in scope of locally applied subject markers may be explicitly 
recorded in subject authority files or may be implicit from the content 
of resources collocated under a single subject marker.
Because of this it is not uncommon that libraries have one specific 
subject marker attached to a resource used locally and another more 
standard equivalent for information exchange within information network 
(national or regional).

c) KOS standard can be source of concepts used to synthesise subject 
markers - the set of concepts/subjects represented by KOS published as 
standard differs to a certain extent from the set of concepts/subjects 
used in indexing collection.

It is good to distinguish whether concept meaning comes from standard 
KOS, is changed by localized application or is harvested  from resource 
metadata and is thus influenced by subjective interpretation of 
cataloguers.

In the light of the above - it appears to me that the possibility to 
manipulate concepts under the influence of resources is a valuable 
addition and an exciting possibility but I am not sure whether this 
should be 'instead' or 'in addition to'.

cheers

Aida

Received on Tuesday, 29 January 2008 11:54:14 UTC