Re: Should we adopt SKOS?

FYI A few years ago, we wrote a paper about the differences between categories and types / classes / concepts:

Hepp, Martin; de Bruijn, Jos: GenTax: A Generic Methodology for Deriving OWL and RDF-S Ontologies from Hierarchical Classifications, Thesauri, and Inconsistent Taxonomies, Proceedings of the 4th European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2007), June 3-7, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria, Springer LNCS, Vol. 4519, pp. 129-144, 2007.

A PDF is at http://www.heppnetz.de/files/hepp-de-bruijn-ESWC2007-gentax-CRC.pdf

Martin


On Jan 9, 2013, at 9:37 PM, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:

> I wouldn't mind schema:Topic as an equivalent to skos:Concept. My feeling, though, is that Categories are something different and can point at Wikipedia as evidence for that:
> 
> Concept/Topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger
> Category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hunger
> 
> The former is a common-sense description of hunger while the latter is an idiomatic "scheme" that binds various concepts/topics. This implies that schema:Category might be a reasonable alternative for skos:ConceptScheme, which I would request be treated as a subclass of scheme:CreativeWork.
> 
> SKOS uses skos:inScheme to relate skos:Concepts with skos:ConceptSchemes. Assuming the analysis above, I could imagine schema:inCategory as a symmetrical equivalent:
> 
> <http://schema.org/Topic> owl:equivalentClass <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#Concept> .
> <http://schema.org/Category> owl:equivalentClass <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#ConceptScheme> .
> <http://schema.org/inCategory> owl:equivalentProperty <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#inScheme> .
> 
> I would also request integrating foaf:focus (or something equivalent) to help us connect "controlled vocabularies" to real entities.
> 
> <http://schema.org/focus> owl:equivalentProperty <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/focus> .
> 
> I could illustrate the use of this "focus" property using VIAF if someone needs an example of the use case.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Dan Brickley [mailto:danbri@danbri.org]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2013 1:01 PM
>> To: Wallis,Richard
>> Cc: public-vocabs@w3.org; Jamie Taylor
>> Subject: Re: Should we adopt SKOS?
>> 
>> +Cc: Jamie
>> 
>> On 9 January 2013 16:29, Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@oclc.org>
>> wrote:
>>> Coming from the bibliographic world, specifically chairing  the
>> Schema
>>> Bib Extend Group[1] (who are building a consensus around a group of
>>> proposals for Schema.org extensions for bibliographic resources,
>>> before submitting them to this group), I am identifying situations
>>> where being able to model things as SKOS[2] Concepts held in
>>> ConceptSchemes would make a great deal of sense.
>>> 
>>> Working with colleagues we were finding ourselves almost reinventing
>>> the SKOS model in [proposed] Schema.org vocabulary.
>>> 
>>> The introduction of External Enumerations[2] provided the ability to
>>> link to lists of things controlled by external authorities.  An
>>> approach used widely in the bibliographic and other domains – Library
>>> of Congress Subject Headings[4] for example.  Many of these
>>> authorities are modelled using SKOS (Concepts within ConceptSchemes)
>>> which introduces a consistent structured way to describe
>> relationships
>>> (broader/narrower), language specific preferred labels, etc.
>>> 
>>> Sub-typing Intangible for Concept and ConceptScheme, it would be
>>> comparatively easy to introduce SKOS into Schema.  The benefits I
>>> believe being to add even more value to External Enumeration;
>>> providing a flexible simple-ish yet standard pattern for marking up
>>> lists of concepts and their interrelationships; provide a very easy
>>> way for already published authoritative lists of concepts to adopt
>>> Schema.org and provide valuable resources for all to connect with.
>>> 
>>> For instance VIAF[4] the Virtual International Authority File, a well
>>> used source of URIs and authoritative names for people and
>>> organisations (compiled and managed by the bibliographic community
>> but
>>> used widely) is already in SKOS.  SKOS is also used in many other
>> domains.
>>> 
>>> I could see this adding value without significant impact on the rest
>>> of Schema.
>>> 
>>> What do others think?
>> 
>> I've been thinking in this direction too (and had brief discussion with
>> Jamie, cc:'d, w.r.t. Freebase's approach).
>> 
>> SKOS has done well and a great many controlled vocabularies in the
>> thesauri, subject classification and code list tradition are expressed
>> using it. SKOS handles various cases where 'class/object/property'
>> models don't capture things well. I'd like to have a way of reflecting
>> SKOS-oriented data into schema.org descriptions without going 'multi-
>> namespace'. There are also already various corners of schema.org where
>> different loose notions of 'category' are slipping in.
>> 
>> My current preference would be to call a new type "Topic" or perhaps
>> "Category" rather than the more esoteric / vague "Concept", even while
>> borrowing most structure and terminology from SKOS.
>> 
>> Do you have a strawman list of what you'd hope to include, from a
>> bibliographic perspective?
>> 
>> Dan
>> 
>>> ~Richard
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Richard Wallis
>>> Technology Evangelist
>>> OCLC
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1] http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/
>>> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/
>>> [3] http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ExternalEnumerations
>>> [4] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html
>>> 
>> 
> 

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martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

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Received on Wednesday, 9 January 2013 20:43:08 UTC