[December 28, 2000] The Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS) Working Group is developing an XML DTD/Schema called 'Vocabulary [Products] MarkUp Language (VocML)' which will support the structured representation of a wide range of KOS resources, "including authority files, hierarchical thesauri (including those with polyhierarchies), classification schemes, digital gazetteers, and subject heading lists." References for the group's draft Taxonomy of KOSs and other work products are provided on the project web site; the site contains a "set of pages is devoted to the discussion of the functional and data model for enabling knowledge organization systems (KOS), such as classification systems, thesauri, gazetteers, and ontologies, as networked interactive information services to support the description and retrieval of diverse information resources through the Internet." A summary of the working group's progress is provided by Gail Hodge (Consultant/National Biological Information Infrastructure, Information International Associates, Inc.) in a recent issue of D-Lib Magazine. "Interest in controlled vocabularies, categorization schemes, authority files and other knowledge organization systems (KOSs) for organizing and standardizing subject access has increased substantially with the introduction of the Web and knowledge management initiatives within organizations. As companies consider the development of KOSs, the extensive investment required to develop and maintain them becomes apparent. One way to reduce the investment is to use KOSs that already exist in a variety of subject areas from architecture to zoology. However, many of these KOSs are not available on the Internet, or they are not in an electronic format that allows for easy access to and retrieval of 'pieces' of the vocabulary with its structure intact. This problem is the focus of the Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS) Working Group, an ad hoc group of more than 70 KOS developers and implementers from 10 countries. Beginning with an initial workshop at the ACM DL 97 Conference, the group has focused on the standards needed for interoperable, networked KOSs -- metadata for describing KOSs and a protocol for transferring information from the electronic KOS to the application that will use it. At a recent meeting held in conjunction with the American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting in Chicago on November 13, members of NKOS focused on a scheme for marking up a KOS. A draft XML DTD, developed by Joseph Busch and Ron Daniel of Metacode, Inc. (now part of Interwoven, Inc.) was presented and reviewed. The schema, called VocML (Vocabulary MarkUp Language), defines a structure for tagging KOS content to retain the structure. The DTD allows for Dublin Core metadata that describes the KOS itself. It also provides tags and syntax for uniquely identifying each term, its relationship to other terms (using the standard Z39.19 relationships as well as more detailed types of associative relationships), and information such as scope notes and definitions. The goal is to make the DTD as generalized as possible..."
References:
VocML 1.0 DTD, under Mozilla Public License Version 1.0. September, 2000. See the note from Joseph Busch: "our current draft XML DTD for vocabularies...internally, this is a work in progress that we revise to reflect our business and customer requirements. It would helpful to get feedback from NKOS about this draft... When we talk about a VocML, there are 3 pieces I think are needed -- Elements and attributes for (1) vocabulary content (info about terms and the relationships among them within a vocabulary), (2) registry content (info about trusted and authoritative vocabulary resources at the vocabulary level. NKOS Registry is an excellent draft), and (3) services (info about how to retrieve, view, edit, etc. terms from one or more vocabularies)... The basic idea for the VocML load file is to allow an arbitrary number of 'works' which may be either Vocabularies or Crosswalks (i.e., Metathesauri). All works have a header and a work ID. Each header has some common material (title, publisher, date, subject, ...) and some material specific to the type of work it is." [cache]
Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS) - "A set of pages is devoted to the discussion of the functional and data model for enabling knowledge organization systems (KOS), such as classification systems, thesauri, gazetteers, and ontologies, as networked interactive information services to support the description and retrieval of diverse information resources through the Internet..."
[December 28, 2000] "NKOS Group Reviews Draft DTD for Thesauri." By Gail Hodge (National Biological Information Infrastructure/Information International Associates). In D-Lib Magazine [ISSN: 1082-9873] Volume 6 Number 12 (December 2000). "D-Lib has published a brief report on the NKOS session that took place in conjunction with the American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting in Chicago on November 13, 2000. The focus of the meeting was on a draft XML DTD for marking up a KOS, developed by Joseph Busch and Ron Daniel of Metacode, Inc. Credits to Gail Hodge for organizing the session and writing the report for D-Lib." [source]
Contacts: Joseph Busch and Ron Daniel (Metacode Technologies, Inc.)
