Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group
Porting Thesauri Task Force (PORT)

This page: Working Drafts | Editor's Drafts | RDF Vocabularies | Objectives | Membership

Nearby: SKOS Core Home | SWBPD Home

This task force of the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment WG is in support of the group's chartered aim of supporting the deployment in RDF/OWL of thesaurus (and similar) structured vocabularies.

Working Drafts

The following documents are W3C Public Working Drafts, and have been formally reviewd by the SWBPD-WG:

• SKOS Core Guide, Second W3C Public Working Draft 2 November 2005
• SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification, Second W3C Public Working Draft 2 November 2005
• Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web, First W3C Public Working Draft 17 May 2005

Editor's Drafts

The following documents are Editor's Drafts, prepared for discussion by SWBPD-WG prior to formal publication:

See also the SKOS Core Proposals and Issues page.

RDF Vocabularies

The PORT TF manages the SKOS Core Vocabulary, an RDF vocabulary for describing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, 'folksonomies', other types of controlled vocabulary, and also concept schemes embedded in glossaries and terminologies. See the SKOS Core home page for a full description and links to current information.

Objectives

short-term objectives

• A W3C Note on thesaurus and related techniques for the Semantic Web.
• An RDF/OWL vocabulary for representing thesaurus structures within RDF.

long term goals

Document strategies for representing Thesaurus-like content using RDF/OWL

Produce guidelines for transforming an existing thesaurus (or classification system, or similar concept-based taxonomy) into an RDF/OWL representation. Guidelines should describe strategies for converting into an RDF representation of thesaurus-like structures, as well as strategies for re-describing in RDF/OWL the content originally conveyed in the Thesaurus.

Provide links to tools, applications, papers on this topic.

The WG should seek to avoid duplicating existing work, and should provide links to existing efforts, encouraging feedback (via the public-esw-thes@w3.org mailing list [archive]) from implementors on the pros- and cons- of the approaches explored.

Encourage dialog between RDF and Semantic Web developers and members of the digital library community

Many existing researchers in the digital library community (including Dublin Core and related) are using classification schemes and thesauri, and are not yet familiar with the facilities offered by RDFS and OWL. It is important to engage these communities rather than offer them solutions couched in the language of RDFS and OWL. In particular, concepts from the thesaurus world, such as 'facets' relate in non-obvious ways to similar, but more formalised, mechanisms offered by W3C's OWL technology.

Membership

To join this task force, working group members contact one of the TF coordinators.

Coordinators:

• Alistair Miles <a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk>
• Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>

Members:

• Guus Schreiber <schreiber@cs.vu.nl>

This work has benefited greatly from contributions made by members of the public-esw-thes@w3.org mailing list [archive]. Their feedback, suggestions and encouragement are gratefully acknowledged.

$Id $