Marianne Lykke Nielsen (Workshop Chair), Department of Information Studies, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Aalborg Branch, Aalborg, Denmark
E-mail: mln@db.dk
Douglas Tudhope, School of Computing, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, UK
E-mail: douglas.tudhope@southwales.ac.uk
Anna Gjerluf Eslau, Regulatory Central Archive, H. Lundbeck. A/S, Valby, Denmark
E-mail: age@lundbeck.com
Knowledge Organization Systems, such as classifications, gazetteers, lexical databases, ontologies, taxonomies and thesauri, attempt to model the underlying semantic structure of a domain. Although, the choice of terminology in well-designed KOS should be based on ‘user warrant’, user-centred approaches have not been an explicit focus for NKOS workshops to date. This theme, however, underlies several issues and is key to achieving the full potential of KOS in Web and digital library environments. Contemporary networked information environments often consist of a range of user discourse communities, each having specific objectives and tasks in relation to a certain topic, each generating their specific discourse and vocabulary. Providers of information resources as well as users of information services may come from diverse knowledge domains looking at the same topics and problems from different perspectives using different vocabularies. Some part of the vocabulary may be shared, some part not. Sometimes, the meaning of the shared concepts is consistent between the domains; sometimes the understanding is diverse, sometimes it converges over time.
The individual user approaches topics and vocabularies from diverse degrees of domain knowledge, varying by educational background, professional experience, and cultural and social background. Non-specialist users may not fully share and understand the specialized vocabularies. For example, one user department of a scientific corporation may know the form but not fully understand a technical or scientific concept, while another user department may understand the concept, but not all the forms or expressions used. An important objective of today’s knowledge organization systems is bridging different domains and vocabularies and assisting users, specialists as well as non-specialists, to explore and navigate these different concept spaces.
Modern digital information systems afford more options for mapping and presenting alternative orders of information than traditional physical libraries. The digital environment offers more possibilities of presenting information from different interests and discourses. Thus, the challenge is as much intellectual as technical when we want to develop knowledge organization systems that are useful and meaningful for the end-users operating in complex, interdisciplinary knowledge domains. Addressing the following challenges is critical:
Identifying different discourses and vocabularies existing in a particular information environment or domain. What methods may be used to gather information about differences in meaning structures, ways of organising and classifying knowledge?
How to define end-users for NKOS purposes? What is the basic unit of analysis: individuals, groups of individuals having similar characteristics or information seekers inside a particular context or discourse? How to define the characteristics of the users that we want to support?
How to present KOS in a form that is understandable for the users. How to develop understandable and thorough descriptions of concepts and terms? How to show and explain relationships? The challenge is to find the appropriate level of explanation, clarity and conciseness. Innovative visualisations of KOS content may also assist.
How to come to some consensus on standard KOS representations and service protocols? A basic infrastructure is needed in order to compare and combine KOS, which may have different viewpoints. We need to provide protocols for networked access to a variety of vocabularies for different end users and applications.
There are different approaches to overcoming these challenges and designing systems from the users’ perspective. The objective of the workshop is to bring together diverse communities and facilitate exchange of viewpoints and ideas, to provide an opportunity for communication and coordination between various, distinctive research programmes and projects dealing with development and design of KOS.
Links to background information
See http://hypermedia.research.southwales.ac.uk/kos/nkos/ and https://nkos.dublincore.org/ for previous NKOS workshops and information about NKOS generally.
Literature about Networked Knowledge Organization Systems
Hodge, G (2000). Systems for Knowledge Organization for Digital Libraries: Beyond traditional authority files.
Journal of Digital Information (JoDI). Special issue on New Applications of Knowledge Organization Systems, 4 (4), 2004
Journal of Digital Information (JoDI). Special issue on Networked Knowledge Organization Systems, 1 (8), 2001
Will, L (1998) Thesaurus principles and practice. London : Willpower Information.
Digital library and information infrastructure developers,
Resource discovery service providers (search engines, directories, subject gateways, portals etc.),
Information scientists, library, museum and archive professionals,
Thesaurus and ontology developers,
Standard developers in the area of terminology usage and exchange,
Interface designers and computer scientists interested in semantic web/grid issues, topic maps, XML/RDF technologies
Language engineering and terminology studies researchers and developers,
Knowledge managers.
Registration and further details
ECDL2004 handle registration for the Workshop as part of the conference registration. The workshop fee is £70. The registration include lunch and refreshment breaks. To register, use ECDL2004 Booking form.
Hanne Albrechtsen, Systems Analysis Department, Risø National Laboratory, Denmark
Stella Dextre Clarke, Information Consultant, Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, United Kingdom
Lois Delcambre, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, OGI School of Science and Engineering, OHSU, USA
Traugott Koch, NetLab, Knowledge Technologies Group, Lund University, Sweden
Dagobert Soergel, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, USA
Diane Vizine-Goetz, OCLC Research, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin OH, USA