Missouri Botanical Garden Open Conference Systems, TDWG 2013 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

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Modeling Property Values: is SKOS part of the solution or part of the problem?
Robert A Morris

Building: Grand Hotel Mediterraneo
Room: Africa (formerly America del Sud)
Date: 2013-10-31 09:55 AM – 10:05 AM
Last modified: 2013-10-05

Abstract


Even for vocabularies of moderate size, recommending values for properties can give rise to technical issues of scalability, social issues of applicability in differing communities, and semantic issues about the relations between literal values and URI references when terms for both are available and should have the same impact. In connection with flattening Audubon Core development, G. Hagedorn has proposed a syntax for literal values that concatenates, roughly, a label from a property with a possible value literal in an important case where there are semantic connections between the two[1]. This appears to be a special case of another reported issue[2] which apparently was contentious enough to give rise to the consideration of relations between SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) labels in a SKOS-XL Extension[3],[4]

Our purpose is to examine whether SKOS Labels offer a useful route to modeling property values, and in particular whether TDWG vocabularies typically run afoul of any “Relationshp between Labels” modeling issues. The presentation is intended to avoid discussion of the formal semantics of SKOS and try to identify issues that have impact principally on vocabulary management. For example, the requirements of SKOS-XL might multiply the number of terms requiring management.


[1] Audubon Core Issue 76: Flattening AccessPoint structure seems to mint new terms,   https://code.google.com/p/auduboncore/issues/detail?id=76

[2] SKOS Issue 26: RelationsBetweenLabels, http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/26

[3] SKOS extension for labels. Appendix B to the W3C SKOS recommendation, http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/#xl

[4] SKOS Primer, Sec 4.3 Relationship between Labels, http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#secrelationshipslabels