Concept co-ordination

Hi,

The SKOS Recommendation suggests waiting until community practice has 
settled down a bit before coming to a view on how to encode co-ordinated 
concepts [1].

I'm currently thinking about how the Bliss Classification might deal 
with this issue, since it uses co-ordination extensively, and in effect 
provides a template which allows users to do their own concept 
co-ordination in addition to those included in the published schedules 
[2].  Accordingly I would welcome advice on this from any community 
members who have trodden this road already.

I'm copying the LCSH list into this message, since I see that 
"double-dash" concept co-ordination seems to be a common feature within 
LCSH, e.g.:

Glass beads--Italy
and
Glass beads--Italy--Murano

One particular question I have relates to the significance of order 
within co-ordinated concepts.  Bliss for example has very clear 
guidelines on the order in which compound concepts should be built up.

Is order significant, in the sense that the same concepts co-ordinated 
in a different order might have a different meaning?  If so, it would 
seem to rule out one suggestion in the SKOS Recommendation, which is 
that owl:intersectionOf could be used to represent co-ordination.  My 
own instinct is that this isn't a simple matter of set intersection, but 
rather that each concept is added in the context of the preceding ones 
(as in the Murano example above).

Richard Light

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-skos-primer-20090818/#secconceptcoordinati
on

[2] http://www.blissclassification.org.uk/bcclass.htm

-- 
Richard Light

Received on Sunday, 8 November 2009 16:26:06 UTC