Selecting thesaurus tools that help to detect and correct integrity problems in thesauri

What is it about?

Thesauri are used to share knowledge from communities. They are made of concepts, organized in hierarchical structures, those with wider scope at top and those more specific at bottom. They can be used to tag information items, to classify them, and to search with their help. The UNESCO thesaurus, Agrovoc, Eurovoc, etc are the result of consensus from wide communities, a valuable feature difficult to achieve. ISO 25964 standard rules what is a thesaurus and what are the integrity rules a thesaurus must always respect. Integrity problems in a thesaurus can be the source of inconsistences when using it to search information. Selecting a tool for thesaurus edition is a task that considers diverse criteria, ease of use, availability, support of constructs used in thesauri, and help to detect and correct integrity problems. This paper offers a methodological framework that thesauri editors can use to select a thesaurus tool. Its focus is the integrity issue. A suite of tests helps to check if the tool under examination conforms with ISO 25964 integrity rules. A proof of concept is included. The framework was applied to three tools: VochBench, PoolParty, and SKOSEd.

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Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Thesauri are now represented with RDF and SKOS, so that they can be shared as linked data and queried through services on the web. This increases their visibility and strengh to share knowledge. Many thesauri are now maintained with tools that use RDF/SKOS to represent thesauri. But SKOS is more flexible than the ISO standard for thesauri. As a result, it cannot be assumed that these tools will conform with every integrity rule that applies to thesauri.

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