Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services
NKOS

NKOS is devoted to the discussion of the functional and data model for enabling knowledge organization systems (KOS), such as classification systems, thesauri, gazetteers, and ontologies, as networked interactive information services to support the description and retrieval of diverse information resources through the Internet.

Announcement

1. Call for papers. The 8th European Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop
Workshop at the 13th ECDL Conference, Corfu, Greece, Thursday, October 1st 2009
http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/research/hypermedia/nkos/nkos2009/

2. New STERNA Technology Watch Report available: http://www.sterna-net.eu/index.php/en/downloads

>The project consortium comprises 12 European natural history museums
> and other institutions that hold content on biodiversity and wildlife.
>
> The project implements semantic access to cultural and scientific
> heritage resources, like it is suggested in the technical
> interoperability roadmap for the European Digital Library.

> Part A of the report provides introductory chapters and presents some
> state-of-the-art projects in the integration of heterogeneous cultural
> heritage collections based on Semantic Web standards (RDF, SKOS, OWL).
>
> As the STERNA project focuses on natural history and biodiversity,
> Part B presents a wider spectrum of related projects, tools and
> information resources (e.g. digitisation of specimen labels and
> taxonomic literature, taxonomic databases and services, online
> collaboration tools, Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs), TDWG LSID
> metadata vocabularies and core ontology, and a number of ontologies
> developed in research projects).
>
> The report also includes recommendations on semantic approaches to
> leverage cultural heritage content integration in the context of the
> European Digital Library initiative as well as how to better integrate
> natural history and biodiversity resources in the initiative.

On-going projects of KOS Registries and Terminology Services

• HILT (High Level Thesaurus) project http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/index.html
  
  
• OCLC Terminologies Service
  Research: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/termservices/
  Service: http://www.oclc.org/terminologies/default.htm
  
  
• NSDL [vocabulary] Registry http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/list.html
  
  
• STAR (Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources) http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/star/
  SKOS terminology services http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/terminology_services/
  
  
• TRSS (Terminology Registry Scoping Study)   http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/trss/

NKOS Listserv

• The NKOS list has been moved to OCLC.
  To send messages FOR DELIVERY TO THE WHOLE LIST, use http://listserv.oclc.org/archives/nkos-l.html or send to: nkos-l@oclc.org

  To send your first message, you will need to get a new password:

  1. Go to http://listserv.oclc.org/archives/nkos-l.html .
  2. Request a new password.
  3. From a confirmation email, click the confirmation link to confirm.
  4. Go back to http://listserv.oclc.org/archives/nkos-l.html, choose "Post to the list".
  5. Use the form to compose and send your message. You may atttach files.

• Archive of NKOS discussion list messages from 6/2001 to 5/2007 has been hosted at DLI2 server
• All NKOS discussion list messages' archive is now hosted at OCLC. The owner is Diane Vizine-Goetz  vizine@oclc.org 
  

Related Publications

• STERNA Technology Watch Report (2009-01): http://www.sterna-net.eu/index.php/en/downloads

• "What is Knowledge Organization", a special issue of Knowledge Organization, Vol. 35 (2008) No.2-3. See Preface and Table-of-Contents (Kind permission of Ergon-Verlag)
  
  
• JISC state-of-the-art review "Terminology Services and Technologies" (2006): http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/terminology/JISC-review2006.html
  
  
• Special Issue: Knowledge Organization Systems and Services (Volume 12 Issue 1 2006) -- Available through New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM) homepage at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=g749307486~db=all
  
  
• ARIST chapter: "Semantics and Knowledge Organization" by Birger Hjørland, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), Volume 41 (2007)
  
  
• Knowledge Organization (ISSN 0943-7444), the official quarterly journal of ISKO (International Society for Knowledge Organization).
  Table of contents: http://www.ergon-verlag.de/en/start.htm?information-_library_sciences_knowledge_organization_(journal).htm
  
  
• ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - 2005 Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies. ISBN: 1-880124-65-3. Search and download the standard at:
  http://www.niso.org/kst/reports/standards/
  
  
• Special issue of Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) on New Applications of Knowledge Organization Systems (Volume 4, issue 4, March 2004), Editors: Douglas Tudhope and Traugott Koch.
  
  
• Special issue of Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) on the theme of Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (Volume 1, issue 8, April 2001), Editor: Traugott Koch.
  
  

Past Workshops and Special Meetings

European NKOS Workshops (see also US NKOS Workshops)

• The 7th European NKOS Workshop at ECDL 2008 Aarhus, Denmark. September 19 or 20, 2008.
  
• The 6th European NKOS Workshop Networked Knowledge Organization Systems and Services at ECDL 2007 September 21, Budapest, Hungary.
  
• The 5th European NKOS Workshop Networked Knowledge Organization Systems and Services at ECDL2006 September 21, Alicante, Spain.
  
• The 4th European NKOS Workshop "Mapping Knowledge Organisation Systems: User-centred Strategies" at ECDL2005, September 22, Vienna. A report is published on D-Lib Magazine November 2005.
  

• The 3rd NKOS Workshop at ECDL, September 16, 2004, Bath, UK "User-centred approaches to Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS)".
  
• The 2nd NKOS Workshop "Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (NKOS): Evolving Standards" at ECDL 2003, August 21, 2003, Trondheim.
  
• NKOS Workshop "NKOS: European initiatives and projects / options for global co-operation" at the Fourth European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL2000), 18-20 September 2000, Lisbon, Portugal.

US NKOS Workshops (see also ECDL NKOS Workshops above)

• The 8th NKOS Workshop "New Dimensions in Knowledge Organization Systems", a Joint NKOS/CENDI Workshop, September 11, 2008, Washington, DC.
  
• The 7th NKOS workshop "Next Generation Knowledge Organization Systems: Integration Challenges and Strategies" at JCDL 2005 June 10 and 11, Denver.
  
• The 6th NKOS Workshop "Building a Meaningful Web: From Traditional Knowledge Organization Systems to New Semantic Tools" at 2003 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), May 31, 2003, Houston, TX. Workshop summary by Dagobert Soergel (ppt) was presented at the ECDL02 NKOS Workshop.
  
• The 5th NKOS Workshop "Digital gazetteers Integration into distributed digital library services" at the 2002 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, July 18th, Portland, Oregon. Workshop Summary (WORD file)
  
• The 4th NKOS Workshop "Classification Crosswalks: Bringing Communities Together" at the First ACM+IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) on June 28th, 2001 in Roanoke, VA.
  
• The 3rd NKOS Workshop at the 2000 ACM Digital Libraries Conference in San Antonio, Wednesday June 7th.
  
• The 2nd NKOS Workshop at the 1999 ACM Digital Libraries Conference in Berkeley, Saturday August 14th
  
• NKOS Workshops at the 1998 and 1997 ACM Digital Libraries Conferences: description of the workshop and notes from the workshop.

International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) conferences

• Tenth International ISKO Conference, Montréal, Canada, August 5-8, 2008. Conference website: http://www.ebsi.umontreal.ca/isko2008/
  Conference Theme: Culture and Identity in Knowledge Organization

• OCLC/ISKO-NA Preconference Workshop: “Everything Need Not Be Miscellaneous: Controlled Vocabularies and Classification in a Web World” (presentations)
  
  
• 9th ISKO International Conference, Vienna, Austria, July 4th-7th, 2006. The theme of the conference is: “Knowledge Organization for a Global Learning Society”. http://isko.univie.ac.at/cms2/index.php

NKOS Workshops at DCxx International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications

• NKOS Workshop at DC 2008, Berlin, Wed., September 24, 2008
  The preliminary agenda is on the preparation wiki page:
  http://colab.mpdl.mpg.de/mediawiki/NKOSevents_2008_preparation

• NKOS Special Session at DC-2005 "Enhancing the Understanding of Meaning: Practical Applications of Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS)" (September 13, 2005). See details and presentation files
  
  
• DC2003, Seattle from Sept. 28 - Oct. 2, special session on Metadata Value Spaces. Traugott Koch presented Activities to advance the powerful use of vocabularies in the digital environment - Structured overview.

Other NKOS meetings and sessions

• Web Service-based Applications: Optimizing Indexing, Searching, and Terminology Services, ASIST 2008 (Link to program description).
  . . Rebecca Guenther. A Registry for controlled vocabularies at the Library of Congress (ppt)
  . . Diane Vizine-Goetz. OCLC Terminology Services beta: Architecture & Standards (link)
  . . Dongming Zhang. Developing a Webservice-based MeSH indexing Tool for Health Science Repository System (ppt)

• "The Challenge of the Electronic Environment to the Organization of Knowledge": Second International Seminar on Subject Access to Information, Helsinki, Finland, 29-30 November 2007 | Program (pdf) with links to abstracts. http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi/STKS.KV.Ontologia%20Programme.261107.pdf
  

• NKOS Special Meeting at the NetLab conference, April 12, 2002, Lund University, Sweden
  Discussion of standard developments regarding the use of thesauri, classification and other KO systems on the net .
  
  
• Digital Gazetteer Information Exchange (DGIE) workshop, funded by the NSF, October 1999. http://alexandria.sdc.ucsb.edu/gazetteer//dgie/DGIE_website/DGIE_homepage.htm
  

NKOS Registry

• NKOS Draft Registry, Thesaurus Description Attributes
• Version 3 NKOS Draft Registry, with Reference Document for Data Elements - Draft, 14 June 2001

Taxonomy of Knowledge Organization Systems

• Taxonomy of Knowledge Organization Systems (draft)

Vocabulary Mark-up Language (Voc-ML)

Vocabulary ML: Metacode strawman DTD draft (developed in 2000, superseded by other activities such as SKOS and some of the ISO standards work on terminologies)

  URL: http://nkos.slis.kent.edu
Last updated: 5/5/2009
Questions and suggestions should be sent to mzeng@kent.edu