astronomy

Simple Knowledge Organization System

Simple Knowledge Organization System is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Simple Knowledge Organization System rather than just read about it. In short: Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C recommendation designed for representation of thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies, subject-heading systems, or any other type of structured controlled vocabulary. SKOS is part of the Semantic Web family of standards built upon RDF and RDFS, and its main objective is to enable easy publication and use of such vocabularies as linked data.

Key takeaways

Simple Knowledge Organization System belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Simple Knowledge Organization System to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Simple Knowledge Organization System from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C recommendation designed for representation of thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies, subject-heading systems, or any other type of structured controlled vocabulary. SKOS is part of the Semantic Web family of standards built upon RDF and RDFS, and its main objective is to enable easy publication and use of such vocabularies as linked data.

History

DESIRE II project (1997–2000) The most direct ancestor to SKOS was the RDF Thesaurus work undertaken in the second phase of the EU DESIRE project . Motivated by the need to improve the user interface and usability of multi-service browsing and searching, a basic RDF vocabulary for Thesauri was produced. As noted later in the SWAD-Europe workplan, the DESIRE work was adopted and further developed in the SOSIG and LIMBER projects. A version of the DESIRE/SOSIG implementation was described in W3C's QL'98 workshop, motivating early work on RDF rule and query languages: A Query and Inference Service for RDF.

LIMBER (1999–2001) SKOS built upon the output of the Language Independent Metadata Browsing of European Resources (LIMBER) project funded by the European Community, and part of the Information Society Technologies programme. In the LIMBER project CCLRC further developed an RDF thesaurus interchange format which was demonstrated on the European Language Social Science Thesaurus (ELSST) at the UK Data Archive as a multilingual version of the English language Humanities and Social Science Electronic Thesaurus (HASSET) which was planned to be used by the Council of European Social Science Data Archives CESSDA.

SWAD-Europe (2002–2004) SKOS as a distinct initiative began in the SWAD-Europe project, bringing together partners from both DESIRE, SOSIG (ILRT) and LIMBER (CCLRC) who had worked with earlier versions of the schema. It was developed in the Thesaurus Activity Work Package, in the Semantic Web Advanced Development for Europe (SWAD-Europe) project. SWAD-Europe was funded by the European Community, and part of the Information Society Technologies programme. The project was designed to support W3C's Semantic Web Activity through research, demonstrators and outreach efforts conducted by the five project partners, ERCIM, the ILRT at Bristol University, HP Labs, CCLRC and Stilo. The first release of SKOS Core and SKOS Mapping were published at the end of 2003, along with other deliverables on RDF encoding of multilingual thesauri and thesaurus mapping.

Semantic web activity (2004–2005) Following the termination of SWAD-Europe, SKOS effort was supported by the W3C Semantic Web Activity in the framework of the Best Practice and Deployment Working Group. During this period, focus was put both on consolidation of SKOS Core, and development of practical guidelines for porting and publishing thesauri for the Semantic Web.

Development as W3C Recommendation (2006–2009) The SKOS main published documents — the SKOS Core Guide, the SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification, and the Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web — were developed through the W3C Working Draft process. Principal editors of SKOS were Alistair Miles, initially Dan Brickley, and Sean Bechhofer. The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group, chartered for two years (May 2006 – April 2008), put in its charter to push SKOS forward on the W3C Recommendation track. The roadmap projected SKOS as a Candidate Recommendation by the end of 2007, and as a Proposed Recommendation in the first quarter of 2008. The main issues to solve were determining its precise scope of use, and its articulation with other RDF languages and standards used in libraries (such as Dublin Core).

Formal release (2009) On August 18, 2009, W3C released the new standard that builds a bridge between the world of knowledge organization systems – including thesauri, classifications, subject headings, taxonomies, and folksonomies – and the linked data community, bringing benefits to both. Libraries, museums, newspapers, government portals, enterprises, social networking applications, and other communities that manage large collections of books, historical artifacts, news reports, business glossaries, blog entries, and other items can now use SKOS to leverage the power of linked data.

Historical view of components SKOS was originally designed as a modular and extensible family of languages, organized as SKOS Core, SKOS Mapping, and SKOS Extensions, and a Metamodel. The entire specification is now complete within the namespace http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#.

Overview In addition to the reference itself, the SKOS Primer (a W3C Working Group Note) summarizes the Simple Knowledge Organization System. The SKOS defines the classes and properties sufficient to represent the common features found in a standard thesaurus. It is based on a concept-centric view of the vocabulary, where primitive objects are not terms, but abstract notions represented by terms. Each SKOS concept is defined as an RDF resource. Each concept can have RDF properties attached, including:

one or more preferred index terms (at most one in each natural language) alternative terms or synonyms definitions and notes, with specification of their language Concepts can be organized in hierarchies using broader-narrower relationships, or linked by non-hierarchical (associative) relationships. Concepts can be gathered in concept schemes, to provide consistent and structured sets of concepts, representing whole or part of a controlled vocabulary.

Element categories The principal element categories of SKOS are concepts, labels, notations, documentation, semantic relations, mapping properties, and collections. The associated elements are listed in the table below.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Simple Knowledge Organization System

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Simple Knowledge Organization System claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Simple Knowledge Organization System before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Simple Knowledge Organization System ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Simple Knowledge Organization System

In research: Simple Knowledge Organization System appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Simple Knowledge Organization System in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Simple Knowledge Organization System is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Knowledge representation, Semantic Web, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Simple Knowledge Organization System outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Simple Knowledge Organization System in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Simple Knowledge Organization System means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Simple Knowledge Organization System out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Simple Knowledge Organization System in simple terms?

Why does Simple Knowledge Organization System matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Simple Knowledge Organization System?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Simple Knowledge Organization System.