Networked Knowledge Organization Systems and Services

Workshop Proposal for ECDL 2007

Duration: 1 day
Expected number of participants: 40

Organisers

Douglas Tudhope
School of Computing, University of Glamorgan,
Pontypridd, Wales CF37 1DL, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1443-482271
Fax: +44 (0) 1443-482715
E-mail: douglas.tudhope@southwales.ac.uk
URL: http://staff.southwales.ac.uk/users/293-dstudhope/

Marianne Lykke Nielsen
Department of Information Studies,
Royal School of Library and Information Science,
Aalborg, Denmark
Tel.: +45 98 15 79 22
E-mail: mln@db.dk
URL: http://www.db.dk/mln

Traugott Koch
Max Planck Digital Library, Invalidenstr. 35,
D-101 15 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 30-288867789
E-mail: traugott.koch@mpdl.mpg.de
URL: http://www.mpdl.mpg.de/staff/tkoch/

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Workshop organisers (short CVs)

Douglas Tudhope is Reader in the School of Computing, University of Glamorgan and leads the Hypermedia Research Unit. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1976 with a 1st class Honours BSc in Computer Science. He received a PhD from the University of Wales in 1981. Before joining the University of Glamorgan, he worked as a Programmer/Analyst, at the University of California, San Diego for the Hubble Space Telescope Project 1984 - 1989, with responsibilities in the areas of image processing and analysis and system management. His main current research interests are the intersecting areas of information science, digital libraries and hypermedia and in the emerging semantic web/grid. He directed the UK national science research council (EPSRC) funded FACET project in collaboration with the UK Science Museum; J. Paul Getty Trust (provided the Art and Architecture Thesaurus for the project); Museum Documentation Association; Canadian Heritage Information Network. This project investigated semantic query expansion in thesaurus-based retrieval and the close integration of the thesaurus in the search interface. Since 1977, he has been Editor of the journal, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia and he is currently Theme Editor, Information Discovery, Journal of Digital Information (JoDI). He serves as a reviewer for various journals and international programme committees. He is a member of the Networked Knowledge Organisation Systems/Services (NKOS) network and has organised or co-organised all 5 NKOS workshop at ECDL. He co-edited the 2004 NKOS JoDI issue with Traugott Koch and co-edited the 2006 KOS NRHM issue with Marianne Lykke Nielsen. He co-authored the 2006 JISC State of the Art Review on Terminology Services and Technology with Traugott Koch - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/terminology/TSreview-jisc-final-Sept.html
http://staff.southwales.ac.uk/users/293-dstudhope/

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Marianne Lykke Nielsen holds a first degree in Librarianship (1983) and a MSc in Library and Information Science (1992) from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark. She received a PhD from Åbo Akademi University, Department of Information Studies, Finland in 2002. From 1994 she is Associate Professor at the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark. From 1983 and 1994 she worked as information specialist in private and national organizations: FAO (Chile); CPEIP (Chile), APV Pasilac (Denmark), and Aalborg Business College (Denmark), with responsibilities in the area of information retrieval and design of information retrieval systems and domain-specific, in-house thesauri. Her principal teaching areas are metadata, indexing and knowledge organization systems (KOS). Her present research activities concentrate about design, construction methodologies, and use of thesauri and taxonomies in digital libraries and other retrieval systems. She collaborates with H. Lundbeck and Verity Inc to test corporate thesaurus for query expansion and automatic tagging. She works together with OGI School of Science & Engineering, Oregon Health & Science University, the Computer Science Department, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University and the USDA Forest Service to evaluate a multi-hierarchical taxonomy for indexing and searching. She has carried out consultancy work for several Danish companies and organizations concerning design and evaluation of KOS. She is co-editor of Danish Library Research , and she serves as a reviewer for various journals and international programme committees. She is member of the ISO Records Management Metadata Working Group, and the Danish Research Network of E-gov IT Architecture.
http://www.db.dk/mln

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Traugott Koch is Interoperability, Metadata and Research Officer at Max Planck Digital Library, Berlin. During his 21 years at Lund University, Sweden, he co-founded 1992 the Digital Library development department NetLab and worked there as a Senior Librarian and Digital Library Scientist until 2005. Traugott is still a member of the Knowledge Discovery and Digital Library Research Group (KnowLib) at the Department of Information Technology at Lund University. Other affiliations have included UKOLN, OCLC, the Technical Knowledge Center & Library of Denmark, the Maastricht McLuhan Institute and the FAO. Traugott has worked in European Union, Nordic and national digital library projects, i.e. the EU projects DESIRE I and II, EULER and Renardus, a TEMPUS project in Lithuania, the Networks of Excellence DELOS and E-Culture Net, the Nordic Metadata Project, EELS (the Engineering Electronic Library Sweden), the eScience project ebank UK and the project "Intelligent components in a distributed Digital Library". He has published more than 60 scholarly papers, edited one book and four journal special issues and has presented a large number of lectures, papers, courses and workshops. Traugott serves on many programme committees for conferences, reviews papers and chairs sessions (e.g. ECDL since 2000). In 2003 he was the Program Chair of ECDL. He is Theme Editor Information Discovery of the electronic peer reviewed journal "Journal of Digital Information" (JoDI) and a member of several other editorial and project boards (eg IJDL). Traugott has been a member of the Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS) network since the beginning 1997 and served as organiser, chair and presenter at NKOS workshops and events both in the USA and Europe. He was editor of two NKOS special issues in JoDI 2001 and 2004. He has been involved in all five prior NKOS workshops at ECDL.
http://www.mpdl.mpg.de/staff/tkoch/

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Extended Abstract

We propose a full-day workshop of projects, research, and development related to next-generation Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS) in digital libraries. This proposal builds on the well-attended NKOS workshops at ECDL 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. We would expect 40 attendees at this workshop. The proposal is supported by the international NKOS network, its website and discussion list. Presentations are made available on the workshop website.

Knowledge Organization Systems, such as classifications, gazetteers, lexical databases, ontologies, taxonomies and thesauri, attempt to model the underlying semantic structure of a domain. 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. The workshop would address the following general themes, although we will also remain open to emergent issues and plan to reserve a session for areas emerging from presentation proposals:

• Social tagging. Participative user-based approaches to knowledge organization and cataloguing are emerging and attracting significant community support. What is the role of social tagging and informal knowledge structures versus established KOS?
• Semantic Web applications and implications of KOS. How can KOS contribute to Semantic Web efforts and conversely how can Semantic Web standards and technologies facilitate novel KOS applications and semantic interoperability research. What are the next steps for SKOS-based tools?
• Terminology for language-oriented applications. Common ground and differences in knowledge organisation approaches between terminology and information retrieval communities.
• Terminology registry. What are the range of services that a terminology registry might offer and what role can it play as a shared infrastructure service? We need to identify and specify use cases and sustainable business models.
• Terminology services. We need to identify and specify terminology services for different applications, within a service-oriented approach/architecture, building on the basic infrastructure.
• KOS Interoperability. Cross-browsing and cross-searching between distributed KOS services, mapping between terms, classes and systems, mapping between KOS and ontologies.
• User-centred design issues. User-centred design strategies for KOS. How to develop understandable and thorough descriptions of concepts and terms? How to show and explain relationships?

Brief description of the workshop
The 6th NKOS workshop at ECDL explores the potential of Knowledge Organization Systems, such as classifications, gazetteers, lexical databases, ontologies, taxonomies and thesauri. These attempt to model the underlying semantic structure of a domain for purposes of information retrieval, knowledge discovery, language engineering, semantic web. The workshop provides an opportunity to report and discuss projects, research, and development related to Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services in next-generation digital libraries.

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Workshop Structure

An open call for papers will be combined with selected invitations from major projects and demonstrations. The workshop is planned to consist of an introduction, technical presentations and a concluding directed discussion. The program committee will assist the review process as first-tier reviewers. The organisers will coordinate the process. The organisers and program committee will promote the workshop through their various contacts and discussion lists.

Indicative agenda structure, covering approximately 8 hours, including lunch and breaks:

Session 1: Welcome and introduction (hrs 0:30)
Session 2: Presentations drawing on user and application oriented themes outlined above (hrs: 2)
Session 3: Open Session without predefined topic for issues emerging from the cfp (hrs: 1)
Session 4: Presentations focusing on technical and standards related issues (hrs: 2)
Session 5: Briefing session in which emergent issues may be presented and discussed (hrs 1)
Session 6: Concluding directed discussion, including options for co-operation (hrs 0.30)

Supporting material for the workshop would, following standard NKOS practice, be available via the NKOS website. This would include abstracts of presentations, information on participants, list of resources, projects and plans for the workshop before the conference. After the workshop, copies of presentations will be made available on the website and via the main NKOS network website.

Previous NKOS workshops have resulted in journal special issues (see References). Authors presenting significant results at the workshop will be encouraged to submit papers for consideration in a future issue of the Journal of Digital Information (Koch and Tudhope are JoDI theme editors for Information Discovery).

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Program committee

Hanne Albrechtsen, The Institute of Knowledge Sharing, Denmark
Gerhard Budin, Zentrum für Translationswissenschaft, University of Vienna, Austria
Ron Davies, Information Consultant, Brussels, Belgium
Stella Dextre Clarke, Information Consultant, Luke House, Wantage, UK
Koraljka Golub, KnowLib, Department of Information Technology, Lund University, Sweden
Martin Doerr, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH), Greece
Bernhard Haslhofer, University of Vienna, Austria
Gail Hodge, Information International Associates, Inc., USA
Eva Mendez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Libby Miller, W3C, Bristol, UK (to be confirmed)
Alistair Miles, CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK
Dagobert Soergel, University of Maryland, USA
Joseph Tennis, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada
Diane Vizine-Goetz, OCLC Research, USA
Marcia Zeng, Kent State Univ, USA

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Technical Requirements

The usual PC and projector, with 2-3 side tables for demonstrations if possible.

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Expected participants

• 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,
• Computer scientists interested in semantic web/grid issues, topic maps, XML/RDF technologies, web engineering, peer-to-peer researchers
• User interface designers for KOS and Semantic Web applications
• Social tagging and community-based application developers and users
• Language engineering and terminology studies researchers and developers
• Knowledge managers

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Previous NKOS Workshops

See http://hypermedia.research.southwales.ac.uk/kos/nkos/ and https://nkos.dublincore.org/ for previous NKOS workshops and information about NKOS generally.

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Content by: Douglas Tudhope of University of Glamorgan.
Page last revised on: 21-May-2007