Jacobs, I.: From chaos, order: W3C standard helps organize knowledge : SKOS Connects Diverse Knowledge Organization Systems to Linked Data (2009)
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- Abstract
- 18 August 2009 -- Today W3C announces a new standard that builds a bridge between the world of knowledge organization systems - including thesauri, classifications, subject headings, taxonomies, and folksonomies - and the linked data community, bringing benefits to both. Libraries, museums, newspapers, government portals, enterprises, social networking applications, and other communities that manage large collections of books, historical artifacts, news reports, business glossaries, blog entries, and other items can now use Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) to leverage the power of linked data. As different communities with expertise and established vocabularies use SKOS to integrate them into the Semantic Web, they increase the value of the information for everyone.
- Content
- SKOS Adapts to the Diversity of Knowledge Organization Systems A useful starting point for understanding the role of SKOS is the set of subject headings published by the US Library of Congress (LOC) for categorizing books, videos, and other library resources. These headings can be used to broaden or narrow queries for discovering resources. For instance, one can narrow a query about books on "Chinese literature" to "Chinese drama," or further still to "Chinese children's plays." Library of Congress subject headings have evolved within a community of practice over a period of decades. By now publishing these subject headings in SKOS, the Library of Congress has made them available to the linked data community, which benefits from a time-tested set of concepts to re-use in their own data. This re-use adds value ("the network effect") to the collection. When people all over the Web re-use the same LOC concept for "Chinese drama," or a concept from some other vocabulary linked to it, this creates many new routes to the discovery of information, and increases the chances that relevant items will be found. As an example of mapping one vocabulary to another, a combined effort from the STITCH, TELplus and MACS Projects provides links between LOC concepts and RAMEAU, a collection of French subject headings used by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and other institutions. SKOS can be used for subject headings but also many other approaches to organizing knowledge. Because different communities are comfortable with different organization schemes, SKOS is designed to port diverse knowledge organization systems to the Web. "Active participation from the library and information science community in the development of SKOS over the past seven years has been key to ensuring that SKOS meets a variety of needs," said Thomas Baker, co-chair of the Semantic Web Deployment Working Group, which published SKOS. "One goal in creating SKOS was to provide new uses for well-established knowledge organization systems by providing a bridge to the linked data cloud." SKOS is part of the Semantic Web technology stack. Like the Web Ontology Language (OWL), SKOS can be used to define vocabularies. But the two technologies were designed to meet different needs. SKOS is a simple language with just a few features, tuned for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems such as thesauri and classification schemes. OWL offers a general and powerful framework for knowledge representation, where additional "rigor" can afford additional benefits (for instance, business rule processing). To get started with SKOS, see the SKOS Primer.
