Call for Presentations and Participation
4th European Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop
EDCL2005 September 22^nd, Vienna

Mapping Knowledge Organisation Systems: User-centred Strategies

• Workshop programme

• Background

• Workshop programme - presentations now available - NEW

• Expected participants

• Program comittee

• Registration and further details

• Links to background information

Workshop programme

An NKOS Workshop will take place on September 22^nd, as part of ECDL 2005 in Vienna. It builds on the previous NKOS Workshops at ECDL 2000, 2003 and 2004. Proposals are invited for presentations (20 minutes) on work or projects related to the themes of the workshop or to NKOS more generally. Presentations from the Workshop may be selected for consideration in a forthcoming (early 2006) NKOS special issue of the journal New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia.

Please email proposals (approx 500 words including aims, methods, main findings) by June 20 to Douglas Tudhope. Advance indication that you intend to submit would be helpful. Proposals will be peer-reviewed by the program committee and notification of acceptance will be given by July 15. After the workshop, copies of presentations will be made available on this website. Further details will be posted on the website as they emerge.

The workshop aims to address key challenges for KOS posed by the overlapping themes of

• User-centred design issues  
• Mapping between different KOS
• KOS representations and service protocols

However other topics can also be proposed. See below for indicative list of topics and provisional schedule.

Background

Knowledge Organization Systems, such as classifications, gazetteers, lexical databases, ontologies, taxonomies and thesauri, attempt to model the underlying semantic structure of a domain for the purposes of retrieval. New networked KOS services and applications are emerging and we have the opportunity to draw on a number of technologies that can be combined to yield new solutions. These include developments of Information Science approaches to automatic indexing and vocabulary mapping, search systems and interfaces, together with contributions from other disciplines. For example, we can formalise and enrich existing representations for automated KOS applications, exploiting the infrastructure of Semantic Web encoding schemes and technologies. Language engineering offers a variety of tools and linguistic resources. New standards in web services are emerging and user centred approaches are yielding more sophisticated models of how users search for information.

The workshop aims to address the following key themes:

• 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? The challenge is to find the appropriate level of explanation, clarity and conciseness.

• Mapping between different KOS - How to achieve semantic interoperability? Cross-browsing and cross-searching between distributed KOS services. Mapping between terms, classes, systems and types of KOS. Innovative visualization methods to support KOS development and mapping.

• KOS representations and service protocols - A basic infrastructure is needed to provide protocols for networked, programmatic access to a variety of vocabularies for different end users and applications. These require standard representations in formats such as RDF/XML. What is the appropriate granularity of base services to apply in evolving Web/Grid environments?

The aim 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. The issues discussed may range from considerations related to the role of KOS, conceptual content and design, methodological issues, and technical issues (protocols and XML-RDF technologies).

Other topics for presentations can also be proposed. Possible examples include

• NKOS registries

• Topic Map standards and how they might relate to KOS standards

• Ontology description languages, W3C standards

• Semantic Web and Semantic Grid implications (web services)

• Terminology Services (taxonomy servers) and linking to associated DL service protocols 

• Integrating language engineering/terminology/corpus analysis studies and  NKOS research

• Appropriate user interfaces for terminology services and KOS visualisation

• Semi-automatic methods that combine automated KOS creation and enhancement with intellectual development methods.

Provisional workshop

The full-day workshop will consist of technical presentations and demonstrations with discussion.

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

Expected participants 

• Digital library and information infrastructure developers,

• Resource discovery service providers (search engines, directories, subject gateways, portals etc.)

• 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

• Knowledge managers

Program committee

Hanne Albrechtsen, Risø National Laboratory, Denmark
Stella Dextre Clarke, Luke House, Wantage, United Kingdom
Ron Davies, Information Consultant, Brussels, Belgium
Lois Delcambre , Computer Science Department, Portland State University, USA
Martin Doerr, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology, Greece
Traugott Koch, Knowledge Technologies Group, Lund University, Sweden
Alistair Miles,  CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom
Dagobert Soergel , University of Maryland, USA
Diane Vizine-Goetz , OCLC Research, USA
Marcia Zeng, Kent State University, USA

Registration and further details

ECDL2005 will handle registration for the Workshop as part of the conference registration. http://www.ecdl2005.org/registration.html

See also the NKOS website for general information on NKOS issues: http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/

Links to background information

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.

Update: oktober 07, 2005 - Mimi Nielsen