Announcement of W3C SKOS Core first public Working Drafts

  W3C Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group 

We are pleased to announce the publication of the following technical
reports as first public Working Drafts:

  SKOS Core Guide
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-guide-20050510/

  SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-spec-20050510/

  Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-thesaurus-pubguide-20050517/

SKOS Core is a simple, flexible and extensible language for expressing
the structure and content of concept schemes (thesauri, classification
schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries
and other types of controlled vocabulary) in a machine-understandable
form.

The SKOS Core Vocabulary is an application of the Resource Description
Framework (RDF).  Using RDF allows data to be linked to and/or merged
with other data. In practice, this means that distributed sources of
data can be meaningfully composed and integrated.

The 'SKOS Core Guide' is a guide to the recommended usage of the SKOS
Core Vocabulary, for readers who already have a basic understanding of
RDF concepts.

The 'SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification' gives a reference-style
overview of the SKOS Core Vocabulary, and describes policies for
ownership, naming, persistence and change management.

The 'Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web'
describes in brief how to express the content and structure of a
thesaurus, and metadata about a thesaurus, in RDF, and gives some
practical guidance for publication of RDF data.

These reports are first public Working Drafts, and are work in
progress.  We ask at this stage for feedback from anyone with a
potential interest in using these specifications, or with relevant
expertise.  Please send comments and suggestions on these drafts to
public-esw-thes@w3.org and begin the subject line of the message with
'comment:'.  If possible, please send comments before 30th June 2005. 

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group is
committed to a public, consensus-driven design environment for SKOS
Core, and to this end conducts all SKOS-related discussion in public,
in particular drawing on feedback from the Semantic Web Interest Group
mailing list public-esw-thes@w3.org.  This work has benefited greatly
from contributions made by the members of this mailing list, and their
feedback, suggestions and encouragement are gratefully acknowledged.
The public-esw-thes@w3.org mailing list is open, and anyone is welcome
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Yours on behalf of W3C Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment
Working Group,

Alistair Miles
Dan Brickley

Received on Tuesday, 7 June 2005 14:25:27 UTC