SKOS: Simple Knowledge Organization System
Jon Phipps
Cornell
The SKOS Specifications provide a standard way to represent knowledge organization systems (KOS) such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) within the framework of the Semantic Web. The SKOS Specifications are currently published as W3C Working Drafts and the W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group (SWDWG) has recently taken responsibility for developing SKOS towards W3C Recommendation status by the first quarter of 2008. The SWDWG has undertaken a requirements gathering exercise, to provide a firm foundation for this work and published a working draft on SKOS Use Cases and Requirement.
The NSDL Metadata Registry, a project funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) project, is an online application that provides the global community of metadata creators with the ability to create, maintain, and publish controlled vocabularies, thesauri, taxonomies, and related metadata schemas in a managed environment. The Registry provides targeted services to both developers and consumers of controlled vocabularies and is one of the first production deployments of SKOS.
This talk will introduce SKOS and discuss its utility in KOS development, particularly in the context of the NSDL Metadata Registry.