SKOS Implementation: IUPAC Green Book

* Vocabulary title(s):
IUPAC Green Book

* Name of person and/or organisation responsible for the implementation:
Mark Borkum (m.i.borkum@soton.ac.uk), University of Southampton

* SKOS constructs used:
skos:ConceptScheme
skos:Concept
skos:inScheme
skos:prefLabel

* URL(s) for published SKOS data:
Not available (yet!)

* Can the software read SKOS data:
No

* Can the software write SKOS data:
Yes

* Can the software check consistency of SKOS data with respect to the 
SKOS data model:
No. The system maintains a simplified, domain-specific model (books, 
indexes and terms) and maps instances of the model to SKOS.

The goal of the "Green Book" project is to provide a user-friendly 
version of the IUPAC green book 
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quantities-Units-Symbols-Physical-Chemistry/dp/0854044337/). 
We decided to use SKOS as the serialisation format because of the 
'instant interoperability'. The software was developed using Ruby on 
Rails. The system is represented as a 'top-level' ConceptScheme 
(containing all concepts). Each edition of a book is represented as a 
distinct ConceptScheme.

We are currently working on a number of extensions to the system which 
make use of additional SKOS constructs:
1) Use skos:broader and skos:narrower to indicate the context within 
which a term was used (for example, "atomic mass" is narrower than "mass")
2) Use data-mining of the original text to associate each term with a 
skos:definition
3) Add support for internationalisation using skos:altLabel

Regards,


Mark

--
Mark Borkum
School of Chemistry, University of Southampton
m.i.borkum@soton.ac.uk

Received on Sunday, 3 May 2009 02:06:31 UTC