Documenting a concept definition that has multiple sources

[rowan.brownlee]

Hi all,

If you may assist with an enquiry from a vocabulary manager, please reply to this thread or contact me directly.  I'll leave this open for a week.

Background

The enquiry concerns a flat list of concepts and the first iteration of transforming that list to a machine readable format.  Technical and informatics expertise is limited, as are resources for managing the vocabulary. 

The vocabulary manager has a use case for web presentation of concept descriptions.  They also have a use case for software access to concept descriptions to support human application of concept labels to data descriptions (e.g. via a web input form). 

Issue

The enquiry concerns creation of a concept definition comprising textual extracts from separate sources.  If a definition is comprised of two or three textual components arising from different sources, how best to express a relationship between each component and its source?  In addition, each part of the definition may be associated with an example.  And each example may have its own URL.

I've seen the following approaches.

• Combine everything in one skos:definition
  • definitions, definition source URLs, examples, example URLs

• Combine the definition text components in one skos:definition.  Record source URLs in multiple dc:source 
  

• Separate the definition from examples
  • combine definition text extracts & source URLs with one skos:definition
  • combine examples & example URLs with one skos:example
  • relate definitions & examples via textual numbering. (e.g. definition part 1, 2, 3.  example 1, 2, 3)

Question

Given the background and issue, would you take any of the above approaches?  Would you take another approach?  Or would you first want to know more?

bye

rowan

rowan.b...@ardc.edu.au

[Les Kneebone]

Hi Rowan,

I think there is a relevant section in the SKOS Primer: Advanced Documentation Properties

https://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-skos-primer-20090818/#secadvanceddocumentation

The pattern described above looks to me to align with "Documentation as a Document Reference"

So using the examples there as a basis, I wonder if this works:

ex:zoology skos:definition ex:zoologyDefinitionDocument_1.txt. 

ex:zoology skos:example ex:zoologyExample document_1.txt

ex:zoologyDefinitionDocument_1.txt. dcterms:references ex:zoologyExample document_1.txt

... so a dc element is used to associated a definition document with an example document. 

I guess the relationships between definition documents and example documents is many to many?

ex:zoology skos:definition ex:zoologyDefinitionDocument_1.txt. 

ex:zoology skos:example ex:zoologyExample document_2.txt

ex:zoologyDefinitionDocument_1.txt. dcterms:references ex:zoologyExample document_2.txt

Hope i'm understanding this pattern correctly. At least I'm sure that's the right SKOS reference to be looking at for this problem.

cheers

Les

[Nicholas Car]

If you just want to use plain 'ol SKOS:

• Combine everything in one skos:definition
  • definitions, definition source URLs, examples, example URLs

Definitely don't do this! Multiple definitions mean people won't know which one, or if all, are applicable.

• Combine the definition text components in one skos:definition. Record source URLs in multiple dc:source
  

You could do this, but you would have to make sure that the definition is a harmonised, e.g. single, definition. This way, you've effectively created your own definition, and stated it, but used the multiple sources as influences.

It would then be up to users' to dig in to the various sources if they want to work out which parts of the single definition come from which source.

• Separate the definition from examples
  • combine definition text extracts & source URLs with one skos:definition
  • combine examples & example URLs with one skos:example
  • relate definitions & examples via textual numbering. (e.g. definition part 1, 2, 3. example 1, 2, 3)

Don't do this. Using a logic to relate things to other things in RDF graph, as SKOS is, is a no-no. If you want to relate things, it should be done using graph mechanics. The reason is that some other relation mechanism will be unknown to standard RDF tooling and information models.

Another option:

Create a Concept for each of the similar terms from the sources, exactly as they are, and then create a single parent Concept that is skos:broader than all of them to indicate that it subsumes all of them. You can then indicate that the broader Concept should be used by annotating each of the narrower concepts with a skos:usageNote.

Cheers, Nick

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[rowan.brownlee]

Hi Les & Nick - thanks very much for your thoughts on this - very helpful

bye

rowan