Notations in SKOS

Hi Jakob,

I want to share with you some discussions and decisions we reached regarding notations (ISSUE-79) [1] in SKOS during our recent face-to-face meeting.  

A number of participants in the group found your proposed solution for expressing notations via skos:prefLabel with RFC 4646 private use language subtag useful.  This is the 'x-notation' (and language-specific derivatives) solution you sent to the list on 31 January 2008 [2].  We discussed at length the pros and cons between expressing the notations in labeling properties and through the skos:notation property.  In the end we determined that both approaches might be useful depending on the implementer's needs.

We have resolved "to introduce skos:notation [which will be] a rdf:Property whose value is a typed literal. The datatype of the literal specifies a syntax encoding scheme and the value of the literal is the classification code or the like from that encoding scheme."  

The resolution further states, "As prefLabel is optional, SKOS tools may want to display notations as labels." [3]  We noted that if a skos:notation exists for a Concept that does not have a skos:prefLabel, then SKOS tools may want to display labels generated from the value of the skos:notation.

This means that expressing notations through skos:notation will stand as the best practice, but that implementers can additionally use your construct of expressing the notation in a labeling property with the RFC 4646 private use language subtag to ensure that a Concept is labeled as he/she deems necessary.  Language-specific uses of x-notation, such as the following from your examples in [2], are favored when using labeling properties to express notation data.  

<MyResource>
  skos:prefLabel "France"@en ;
  skos:prefLabel "FRA"@en-x-notation ;
  skos:notation "FRA"^^my:datatype .  ### Tom points out values from dcterms:iso639-3 in [3] as example datatypes

Thanks for your help on this issue,
Clay Redding

[1] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/79
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swd-wg/2008Jan/0211.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2008/05/07-swd-minutes.html#item01

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Clay Redding
Digital Project Coordinator
Network Development & MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress
LA308, Mail Stop 4402
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20540
cred@loc.gov
202-707-7196 
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Received on Tuesday, 27 May 2008 13:52:40 UTC