The document discusses taxonomy standards including ISO 25964, which provides guidance for building and managing thesauri and guidelines for interoperability between controlled vocabularies. It describes the history and development of taxonomy standards, key standards organizations like ISO and NISO, and standards like ISO 25964 that help different controlled vocabularies to work together.

1. Taxonomy
Interoperability
Standards
Marjorie M.K. Hlava
mhlava@accessinn.com
Data Harmony Software
Access Innovations, Inc.
www.accessinn.com
Leveraging your content semantically

2. STANDARDS UPDATE
Taxonomy Boot Camp 2013
2:15 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Taxonomy Interoperability Standard
Marjorie M.K. Hlava, President & Chairman, Access Innovations,
Inc., Data Harmony. My blog is TaxoDiary.com.
Taxonomies at last have a standard to support interoperability
between taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies. The
linking, multilingual, or interoperability of standards has been a
holy grail for many years. With the passage of ISO 25964, Part
Two in 2013, the groundwork has been laid for further
development in these areas. A brief overview of the standard and
its relation to other current standards such as ISO 25964, Part
One; revisions to Z39.19; and the updated British standard BS
8723 Parts 1–5 is provided. In addition, the ISO terminology
standards used by the computer science community are
discussed.
© 2010. Access Innovations, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3. What does it take to make the
components of the digital
information model work…

5. Standardization Makes Life Easier

6. Standard Definition


Written definition, limit, or rule approved
and monitored for compliance by an
authoritative agency (or professional or
recognized body) as a minimum
acceptable benchmark. This is the usual
meaning of the plural term (standards).
See also specification.

7. Groups of standards






Identifiers
Records management
Country codes
Transliteration
Formats
Taxonomy related

8. Traditional Standards

ISO

TC 46
 SC 9
 ISO/CD 25964-1

ANSI


NISO
 Z39.19
BSI

BS 8723 (officially, superseded by
ISO standards)

9. More Standards Groups




W3C
 OWL
 SKOS
US Government
 Office of Management and
Budget
European Union
Individual organization attempts

10. The Process

ISO


164 nations, one vote each
ANSI

US organization

NISO
US Information and Library Standards
Tag 46 – ISO information standards
NISO is the secretariat

11. Impatient others

W3C


World Wide Web Consortium
Ad hoc groups

Author IDs



Industry and National Groups


Library of Congress
Associations for their industry


ORCID
VIVO
SMPTE
Book Industry Study Group

ONIX

12. Proprietary ―Standards‖

PDF – Portable Document Format


Adobe
CSV


Comma separated values
Microsoft

13. Soliciting Input – Formal Process



Standard need
Group with a frustration – need
Standard proposal







NISO topic groups, CCM and others
Call for participation
Write the draft standard
Open for comments
NO must be resolved
Standard for vote
Approved for five years

14. Soliciting Input – Informal Process









Standard need
Group with a frustration – need
Create a Working Group
Write the draft standard
Publish to the web
Allow comments
Resolve comments
When no comments, considered OK
Start implementing / Early implementers

15. Identifiers

ISO/IEC CD 27037, Information technology —
Security techniques —


Information and documentation –


Guidelines for identification, collection, acquisition, and
preservation of digital evidence
International standard document link
ISO/FDIS 24619, Language resource
management —

Persistent identification and sustainable access (PISA)

16. Taxonomy types standards





Vocabularies
Taxonomies
Thesauri
Knowledge Organization Systems
Terminologies

17. Vocabularies

ISO/TC 46



SC 6 and SC 9
Information and documentation
ISO/TC 37

Terminology and other language and content resources

18. ISO TC 46/SC 9



Information and Documentation - Identification
and Description
TC 46 is ISO's Technical Committee (TC) for
information and documentation standards.
SC 9 is the TC 46 Subcommittee (SC) that
develops and maintains ISO standards on the
identification and description of information
resources.

19. Thesaurus and Indexing
Standards – ISO




ISO 2788:1986 (Withdrawn)
Documentation - Guidelines for the establishment and
development of monolingual thesauri
ISO 5964:1985 (withdrawn)
Documentation - Guidelines for the establishment and
development of multilingual thesauri
ISO 5963:1985
Documentation - Methods for examining
documents, determining their subjects, and selecting
indexing terms
ISO 999:1996
Information and documentation - Guidelines for the
content, organization and presentation of indexes

20. ISO TC 37
Scope of ISO TC 37:
Standardization of principles, methods and
applications relating to terminology and other
language resources.
 TC 37/SC 1 - Principles and methods
 TC 37/SC 2 - Terminography and lexicography
 TC 37/SC 3 - Computer applications for
terminology
 TC 37/SC 4 - Language resource management

21. OntoIOp

Terminographical and lexicographical
working methods, for a new project
proposal on: Ontology Integration and
Interoperability (OntoIOp).

A reference ontology for the interchange of
cultural heritage information.

ICOM (International Council of Museums) CIDOC
(International Committee for Documentation)

22. ISO 1087 Terminology
Work



Vocabulary
ISO 1087-1:2000 Terminology work Vocabulary - Part 1: Theory and
application
ISO 1087-2:2000 Terminology work Vocabulary - Part 2: Computer
applications

23. Other ISO standards:
Concept-oriented terminology
ISO 704:2000 Terminology work - Principles and
methods
ISO 860:1996 Terminology work - Harmonization of
concepts and terms
ISO 10241:1992 Preparation and layout of
international terminology standards

24. ISO - Data Categories





ISO 12200:1999 Computer applications in
terminology - Machine-readable terminology
interchange format (MARTIF) - Negotiated
interchange
ISO 12616:2002 Translation-oriented
terminography
ISO/TR 12618:1994 Computer aids in terminology Creation and use of terminological databases and
text corpora
ISO 12620:1999 Computer applications in
terminology - Data categories used to create
glossaries
Others in the work codes

25. ISO 25964



ISO 25964 Information and
documentation - Thesauri and
interoperability with other vocabularies
Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval
[published August 2011]
Part 2: Interoperability with other
vocabularies [published March 2013]

26. Stella G Dextre Clarke
http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/dextreclarke.pdf
26

27. History

ISO 2788, Guidelines for the
establishment and development of
monolingual thesauri.



Published 1974
Updated in 1986.
ISO 5964, Guidelines for the
establishment and development of
multilingual thesauri.

Published 1985

28. History of development
28

29. 2005- 2008


ANSI/ NISO Z39.19 rewritten and
approved.
BS 8723 Structured vocabularies for
information retrieval - Guide





Part 1: Definitions, symbols and abbreviations
Part 2: Thesauri
Part 3: Vocabularies other than thesauri
Part 4: Interoperability between vocabularies
Part 5: Exchange formats and protocols for
interoperability

30. 2006 - 2011


Begin work on international standard to
replace ISO 2788 and ISO 5964.
ISO’s Technical Committee 46





Information and documentation
Subcommittee 9 Identification and description
Working group
Aka ISO TC46/SC9/WG8 Structured
Vocabularies
ANSI/NISO Z39.19 reaffirmed in 2010

31. 2011 - 2013


ISO 2788 and ISO 5964 were withdrawn
ISO 25964 – Part 1 issued.


Covered Parts 1- 4 of BS 8723
ISO 25964 – Part 2



Issued in March 2013
Covered part 5 of BS 8723
Interoperability

32. Mission and Scope



"If both the indexer and the searcher are
guided to choose the same term for the
same concept, then relevant documents
will be retrieved.―
Older versions for single domains
Now used in


Networked applications
Semantic Web

33. Controlled vocabularies and more






Thesaurus
Taxonomy
Ontology
Semantic net
Knowledge
Organization System
(KOS)
Monolingual – single
domain






Multilingual – many
domains
Classification schemes
Subject heading
schemes
Name authority list
Terminologies
Synonym rings.

34. ISO 25964 – Part 1




How to build a monolingual or a
multilingual thesaurus,
how to display it, and
how to manage its development.
The standard also sets out the features
you should look for when choosing
software to manage the thesaurus.

35. ISO 25964 compliant thesaurus





Lists all the concepts available for indexing
in a given context
Labels each of them with a preferred term
Labels any synonyms that apply
Shows relationships between the concepts
and between the terms
Easy to navigate around the field while
building up a search query

36. The relationships

Equivalence



Hierarchical



Synonyms and near-synonyms
Another way to state the concept
Broader and narrower concepts
Genus species / parent child
Associative


Concepts that are closely related in some nonhierarchical way
Cause and effect

37. Get the XML Schema!






There is a data model to use for handling
thesaurus data
Especially when exchanging data
between systems
Contains an XML schema for encoding
the data.
Model and the schema
Free of charge
http://www.niso.org/schemas/iso25964/is
o25964-1_v1.4.xsd

38. ISO 25964 – 2
The Challenges



Using one thesaurus in combination with
another
With another type of controlled vocabulary
Many KOSs used within one organization







Records management system
Library catalog
Corporate intranet
Research lab
External web sites
Stored data drives
Single search on all collections

39. ISO 25964 – 2
Mapping guidance between
..Terms and concepts of one KOS and another
..Other forms of complementary vocabulary use.
.. Repositories and databases that have been
indexed with different KOSs
..Different networks, platforms, software
applications, and languages
.. Corresponding terms in different natural
languages
..

40. 40

41. Interoperability




Between structured vocabularies
Where a thesaurus is involved
In multilingual thesauri
Numerous protocols and standards

42. Adoptions

British Standards Institute






Full adoption
As is
BS ISO 25964-1
Part 2 is in process
Replaces BS 8723
Other countries also in progress

43. What about the Americans?



Much overlap
Broadly compatible
NISO is actively involved in both
standards


Participated in the work of developing ISO 25964
NISO currently runs the Secretariat for the
standard

44. ANSI/NISO Z39.19




Guidelines for the
Construction, Format, and Management
of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies
Covers some of the same ground
Monolingual lists, synonym rings, and
taxonomies, as well as thesauri
Up for review now and reaffirm or
withdraw in 2015

45. ANSI/NISO Z39.19







No data model
No multilingual vocabularies
No interoperability, such as mapping
between KOSs
Either has links to RDA
Should they have?
Does ISO 25964 Part 2 really work?
Should they be rewritten, merged?

46. W3C and SKOS
ISO 25964-1
 About selecting and
organizing concepts,
terms, and their
relationships to make a
good thesaurus
 Shows options for
mappings between KOSs
 Includes more options for
KOS expression
SKOS



Applies to KOSs beyond
thesauri
Addresses porting the
thesaurus to the Web
One way of expressing
term mappings within a
KOS

47. Trying to work with others

US Library of Congress. MADS (Metadata Authority
Description Schema). Washington, DC: Library of
Congress. Available at
http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/

World Wide Web Consortium. SKOS Simple
Knowledge Organization System eXtension for
Labels (SKOS-XL) Namespace Document - HTML
Variant. W3C Recommendation Edition, 18 August
2009. Latest version available at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/skos-xl.html

48. Questions??
Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President
Data Harmony Software
Access Innovations, Inc.
mhlava@accessinn.com

49. Standards are our guiding light
Thank you
Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President
Access Innovations, Inc.
Data Harmony
mhlava@accessinn.com
505-998-0800
www.taxodiary.com - the
taxonomy news blog
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