To make a thesaurus a part of the semantic web, simply
SKOS-Core is the core schema, allowing representation of thesaurus concepts, terms, and organisation of those concepts into hierarchical and associative structures. It has been designed as an extensible framework of properties, and so can be adapted to cope with different types of thesaurus.
The version of SKOS-Core currently available is a pre-release, and a good introduction to using the schema can be found here. A formal release (version 1.0) is planned shortly, along with a guide to using it - watch this space!
SKOS-Mapping is an RDF schema for creating and encoding mappings between thesauri. If mappings between thesauri are available, independent but overlapping thesauri can be used interchangeably, helping to remove the boundaries between collections and communities. A good introduction to SKOS-Mapping with examples is here.
SKOS-Mapping is also currently available as a pre-release version. A formal release can be expected shortly after SKOS-Core 1.0.
There are also a number of reports on issues relating to the use of thesauri on the semantic web, including a review of previous work and a report on multilingual thesauri. The work is ongoing, and discussed on the public-esw-thes@w3.org mailing list (archives) - feel free to join in!
Categories Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) | Thesaurus
Posted by ajmiles at March 4, 2004 09:26 AM