Networked Knowledge Organization
Systems/Services/Structures
N K O S

Announcement | NKOS Application Profile | KOS Registries and Standards | Related Publications

| NKOS Workshops | Archived early efforts | Metadata Standards Updates (2020s)

NKOS is devoted to the discussion of the functional and data model for enabling knowledge organization systems/services (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.

Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (KOS) model the underlying semantic structure of a domain. Embodied as Web-based services, they can facilitate resource discovery and retrieval. They act as semantic road maps and make possible a common orientation by indexers and future users (whether human or machine). -- Douglas Tudhope, Traugott Koch (2004). New Applications of Knowledge Organization Systems: introduction to a special issue.

URL: https://nkos.dublincore.org/ [Previous URL: https://nkos.slis.kent.edu]
Last updated: 2024-11-02

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Announcement

1. CFP for a special issue of Knowledge Organization (ISSN 0943-7444), with the theme "KOS in AI and AI in KOS".
   
   Important dates:
   -Opening date for paper submission: 1st November 2024
   -Closing date for paper submission: 31st January 2025
   -Notification of conditional acceptance: 31st March 2025
   -Closing date for revised paper submission: 30th April 2025
   
   [download the PDF: CFP: KO Special Issue: KOS in AI and AI in KOS]
   
   
2. NKOS 2024 has two events. Part 2 was held in DCMI 2024 Toronto, Oct.20-23; Part 1 was held in ISKO 2024, the 18th ISKO Conference, March 20-22, Wuhan, China. The theme of the NKOS 2024 workshops is:
   • KOS in AI & AI in KOS
     
     
3. Recent NKOS Research, a Special Issue of The Electronic Library (TEL) Volume 41 Issue 6, 2023.
   • Guest editor(s): Joseph Busch, Maureen McClarnon

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NKOS Dublin Core Application Profile (NKOS AP)

NKOS Dublin Core Application Profile (version 0.2) 2015

The DCMI/NKOS Task Group targets to develop a Dublin Core Application Profile for KOS resources based on the work the NKOS group members have already done during the last decade. The application profile will be further tested by professionals and researchers.

• Task Group official webpage: http://dublincore.org/groups/nkos/
  Working wiki archive: https://github.com/dcmi/repository/tree/master/wikis_pre2016/nkos/mediawiki
  

Specifications:

• NKOS Dublin Core Application Profile (version 0.2) | Namespace: http://w3id.org/nkos
  • html: https://nkos.dublincore.org/nkos-ap.html
  • RDF/XML:https://nkos.dublincore.org/nkos.rdf
    
    
• NKOS Types Vocabulary
  • html:https://nkos.dublincore.org/nkos-type.html
  • RDF/XML:https://nkos.dublincore.org/nkostype/nkostype.rdf

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KOS Registries, Terminology Services, and Standard Development

• BARTOC.org | Basel Register of Thesauri, Ontologies & Classifications, developed by Basel University Library, Switzerland, 2013 --
  
  
• Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) | Provides a choice of several hundreds of LOD vocabularies, based on quality requirements including URI stability and availability on the Web, use of standard formats and publication best practices, quality metadata and documentation, identifiable and trustable publication body, proper versioning policy. 2011 --
  
  
• BioPortal | the world's most comprehensive repository of biomedical ontologies
  
  
• *[new] OntoPortal Alliance| The ontology repositories include BioPortal, the primary and historical source of OntoPortal code, also AgroPortal, EcoPortal, MatPortal, MedPortal, SIFR BioPortal, IndustryPortal, and more...
  
  
• FINTO | a Finnish thesaurus and ontology service, which enables both the publication and browsing of vocabularies. | Wiki about thesauri and ontology
  
  
• id.kb.se | A linked data service maintained by National Library of Sweden. Publishes definitions and concepts coordinated with well-known controlled vocabularies and ontologies.
  
  
• Heritage Data | Linked Data Vocabularies for Cultural Heritage
  
  
• *[new] Conservation controlled vocabularies | by Linked Conservation Data consortium
  
  
• Library of Congress Linked Data Services – Authorities and Vocabularies
  
  
• EU Vocabularies | Access to vocabularies managed by the EU institutions and bodies. This includes controlled vocabularies, schemas, ontologies, data models, etc.
  
  
• Getty Vocabularies LOD | Provides multiple Getty vocabularies, (AAT, TGN, and ULAN), with a comprehensive list of query templates and documentation.
  
  
• Open Metadata Registry | The Registry provides a means for to identify, declare and publish through registration their metadata schemas (element/property sets), schemes (controlled vocabularies) and Application Profiles (APs).
  

Standards

ISO 25964. Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies.
Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval (Published December 2011, updating in progress, 2024)
Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies (Published March 2013)

• Official website for information about ISO 25964 | Data Model | XML schema for data exchange | the ISO 25964 Schema webpage
  | a set of correspondences between components of the data models of ISO25964, SKOS-XL, and MADS/RDF.
  
• ISO 25964 SKOS extension (iso-thes) 2015 http://purl.org/iso25964/skos-thes
• Related article: "From ISO 2788 to ISO 25964: the evolution of thesaurus standards towards interoperability and data modeling". Information Standards Quarterly, 2012 Winter 24(1):20-26. PDF doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3789/isqv24n1.2012.04
  

• Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) Namespace Document 25 May 2012, W3C
  The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) is a metadata vocabulary to describe semantic interoperability assets (such as data dictionaries, data models, code lists, XML schemas and RDF models) . Full specification: http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/adms/description Namespace Doc: http://www.w3.org/ns/adms
  
  
• NISO TR-06-2017, Issues in Vocabulary Management
  
  
• ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - 2005 (R2010) Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies. ISBN: 1-880124-65-3. [pdf]
  

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Related Publications

• NKOS (European) Workshops archive (2000 - )  https://nkos-eu.github.io/
  
  
• Knowledge Organization (ISSN 0943-7444), the official quarterly journal of ISKO (International Society for Knowledge Organization). http://www.isko.org/ko.html
  
  

Special Issues

• Knowledge Organization
  • Special issue: Best papers from NKOS Consolidated Workshop 2020
    • Part 1. Knowledge Organization 48(3): 195–230
    • Part 2. Knowledge Organization 48(4): 267–290
    • Guest Editors: Joseph Busch and Joe Tennis



• Journal of Data and Information Science (JDIS) on NKOS. Volume 5 Issue 1, 2020.
  Guest-Editors: Joseph Busch and Douglas Tudhope.
  Online. Download: PDF (288 KB) | Related NKOW Workshop presentations |
  
  
  
• International Journal on Digital Libraries. 2018.
• Golub, K., Schmiede, R. & Tudhope, D. (2018). "Recent applications of Knowledge Organization Systems: Introduction to a special issue." International Journal on Digital Libraries. doi.org/10.1007/s00799-018-0264-8
  
  
• International Journal on Digital Libraries. 2015.
  • Mayr, P., Tudhope, D., Clarke, S. D., Zeng, M. L., & Lin, X. (2015). "Recent applications of Knowledge Organization Systems: introduction to a special issue." International Journal on Digital Libraries. doi:10.1007/s00799-015-0167-x
    
    
• Journal of Library and Information Science (JLIS). 2016.
  • Zeng, M.L. & Chen, S. (2018). "Knowledge Organization and Cultural Heritage in the Semantic Web – A Review of a Conference and a Special Journal Issue of JLIS" Digital Humanities Quarterly 12(2) 2018.
    |The special issue of JLIS 43(2) 2016 is available at: https://jlis.glis.ntnu.edu.tw/ojs/index.php/jlis/issue/view/89
    
    
• Knowledge Organization. 2018.
  • "What is Knowledge Organization." Preface and Table-of-Contents (Kind permission of Ergon-Verlag). Knowledge Organization 35(2-3) 2018.
    
    
• Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) . 2004.
  • "New Applications of Knowledge Organization Systems." (Journal of Digital Information 4(4) 2004). Editors: Douglas Tudhope and Traugott Koch, available at: https://journals.tdl.org/jodi/index.php/jodi/issue/view/20
    
    
• Journal of Digital Information (JoDI). 2001.
  • "Networked Knowledge Organization Systems." (Journal of Digital Information 1(8) 2001), Editor: Traugott Koch, available at: https://journals.tdl.org/jodi/index.php/jodi/issue/view/8
    
    
• New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM). 2006.
  • "Knowledge Organization Systems and Services." NRHM 12(1) 2006. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tham20/12/1 | TOC | Introduction
    
    

Proceedings online

• The joint Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop, TPDL 2018 and DC-2018, Porto, Portugal.
  http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2200/
  
  
• The 17th European NKOS workshop, 21st September 2017, TPDL2017 Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece.
  http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1937/
  
  
• More available at: NKOS (European) Workshops archive (2000 - )  https://nkos-eu.github.io/
  

Other publications

• JISC Terminology Registry Scoping Study (TRSS) report.  The report is published on JISC's TRSS project webpage. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/sharedservices/trss-report-final.pdf
  
  
• STERNA (Semantic Web-based Thematic European Reference Network Application) Technology Watch Report (2009-01): http://www.salzburgresearch.at/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/sterna_tech_watch_report_layoutiert_web.pdf
  
  
• JISC state-of-the-art review "Terminology Services and Technologies" (2006): http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/terminology/JISC-review2006.html
  
  
• 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) [pdf]
  

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NKOS Workshops and Special Meetings

Consolidated NKOS Workshops

• The 2021 NKOS Consolidated Workshop, Sept. 22 and 23, 2021. 9:00-12:30 EDT. (Virtual)
• The 2020 NKOS Consolidated Workshop, Sept. 9 and 10, 2020. 9:00-12:30 EDT. (Virtual)

NKOS Workshops at DCMI International Conferences on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications

• NKOS 2024 has two events. One (Part 2) was held in DCMI 2024 Toronto, Oct.20-23. Another one (Part 1) was held in ISKO 2024, the 18th ISKO Conference, March 20-22, Wuhan, China. The theme of the NKOS 2024 workshops is:
  • KOS in AI & AI in KOS
• NKOS 2023 Workshop at DCMI 2023, Daegu, South Korea and Virtual, Nov. 6, 2023.
• NKOS 2022 Workshop at DCMI 2022, Virtual, October 6-7, 2022
• NKOS 2019 Workshop at DCMI 2019, Seoul, South Korea, September 26, 2019
• The joint 18th European NKOS Workshop at TPDL 2018 and DC-2018, Porto, Portugal, September 13, 2018. (Also listed under European NKOS Workshops)
• The 11th U.S. NKOS Workshop. October 28, 2017. as part of DC-2017 in Crystal City, VA (Washington, D.C.). [Program ] [Presentations]
  
• The 16th European NKOS Workshop at DC-2016, October 15, 2016, Copenhagen, Denmark. (Also listed under European NKOS Workshops
• NKOS Workshop at DC 2008, Berlin, Wed., September 24, 2008. The preliminary agenda is on the preparation wiki pag
• NKOS Special Session at DC-2005 "Enhancing the Understanding of Meaning: Practical Applications of Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS)" (September 13, 2005). Program
  
• Metadata Value Spaces, special session at DC2003, Seattle from Sept. 28 - Oct. 2, 2003.

US NKOS Workshops (held in USA; 1997- 2012, see also above, held at DCMI)

• The 10th NKOS Workshop, "Semantic Search: Magnet for the Needle in the Search Haystack", a Joint NKOS-CENDI Workshop, December 6, 2012, DOT Media Center, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington DC.
• The 9th NKOS Workshop, "Knowledge Organization Systems: Managing Toward the Future", a Joint CENDI/NKOS Workshop, October 22, 2009, The National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD.
• The 8th NKOS Workshop "New Dimensions in Knowledge Organization Systems", a Joint NKOS/CENDI Workshop, September 11, 2008, The World Bank, 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.

European NKOS Workshops (2000 - ) at Github https://nkos-eu.github.io/

• 2022 - at JCDL, virtual
• 2019 - at TPDL, Oslo, Norway.
• 2018 – at TPDL/DCMI joint conference, Porto, Portugal. Proceedings
• 2017 – at TPDL, Thessaloniki, Greece. Proceedings
• 2016 – at joint DC/ASIST, Copenhagen, Denmark. 
• 2015 – at TPDL, Poznań, Poland. 
• 2014 – at joint TPDL & JCDL, London, UK. 
• 2013 – at TPDL, Valletta, Malta.
• 2012 – at TPDL, Paphos, Cyprus. 
• 2011 – at (renamed) TPDL (Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries), Berlin, Germany.
• 2010 – at ECDL, Glasgow, Scotland. 
• 2009 – at ECDL, Corfu, Greece. 
• 2008 – NKOS Special Session at DCMI 2008, Berlin, Germany
• 2008 – at ECDL, Aarhus, Denmark.
• 2007 – at ECDL, Budapest, Hungary.
• 2006 – at ECDL, Alicante, Spain.
• 2005 – NKOS Special Session at DC-2005, Madrid, Spain
• 2005 – at ECDL, Vienna, Austria.
• 2004 – at ECDL, Bath, England.
• 2003 – at ECDL, Trondheim, Norway.
• 2002 – NetLab conference, Lund, Sweden
• 2000 – at ECDL (European Conference on Digital Libraries), Lisbon, Portugal.

ASIS&T Annual Meeting -- NKOS sessions

"If You Build It, Will They Come? – A Discussion of Use Cases and Barriers of Using the Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) Available as Linked Open Data (LOD)" (abstract) -- Panel presentations at ASIS&T 2015

1. Marcia Lei Zeng (Kent State University): New Functions of LOD KOS Beyond “Value Vocabularies” and Barriers in the Current Practices of Using Them (ppt)
   
2. Marjorie Hlava (Access Innovations, Albuquerque): Implementing Linked Open Data in a Controlled Vocabulary (ppt)
   
3. Joseph A. Busch (Taxonomy Strategies, Washington, DC): What’s Missing from SKOS, Why is It Missing, and What Should be Done About It? (ppt)
   
4. Olga Buchel (Counting Opinions, Canada): Improving Usability of Geospatial LOD KOS with Map-based Visualizations (ppt)
5. Maja Žumer (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) moderator

"Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) as Linked Data Services" (abstract) -- Panel presentations at ASIS&T 2014

1. Joseph A Busch& Vivian Bliss (Taxonomy Strategies): Changing from a Hierarchical Classification to a Linked Data Standard: American Physical Society (APS) Taxonomy Case Study (ppt)
2. Imma Subirats (FAO of UN) & Marcia Lei Zeng (Kent State University): Using KOS as the Connectors of Linked Datasets (ppt)
3. Marjorie Hlava (Access Innovations): How about Linked data and triples - making them a reality (ppt)

"Maximizing the Usage of Value Vocabularies in the Linked Data Ecosystem" (abstract) -- Panel presentations at ASIS&T 2013

1. Ed O’Neill & Jeff Mixter, (OCLC Research): (1) The Case for Faceting (2) FAST Linked Data Mechanics (ppt)
2. Marcia Lei Zeng (Kent State University) & Maja Zumer (University of Ljubljana): Managing and Sharing KOS
   through Registries and RDFa/microdata Using a Metadata Application Profile (ppt)
3. Xia Lin (Drexel University): Meaningful Concept Displays for KOS-­-based Searching and Browsing
4. [Joseph A Busch (Taxonomy Strategies)]::Evaluating Taxonomies (recorded ppt)

"Semantic Metadata as Linked Data Building Blocks" (abstract) -- Panel presentations at ASIS&T 2012
Joseph Busch, [Marjorie Hlava], Marcia Zeng and [Gail Hodge]

1. Joseph Busch: Semantic Metadata, A Tale of Two Types of Vocabularies (ppt)
2. Marcia Lei Zeng: The state of KOS in the Linked Data movement - The publishing, management, and interoperating of KOS for the Semantic Web. (ppt)
   

"Linked Data --Enabling Standards and Other Approaches" -- Panel presentations at ASIS&T- 2010

1. Gail Hodge: Introduction. (ppt)
2. Sam Oh: Linked Data and Identifiers. (ISO TC46/SC9 (Identification and Description activities updates; the second edition of Web Ontology Language (OWL2)) (ppt)
3. Jon Phipps: SKOS: A W3C Recommendation. (ppt)
4. Ed Summers: RDFa -- Linked Data on the Web We Have. (external link)
5. Mark Needleman and Jody DeRidder: NISO I2 (Institutional Identifiers) (ppt)
6. Marcia Zeng, Jon Phipps, and Ed Summers: Introducing W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group (LLD XG) (ppt)

"Knowledge Organization: Evaluating Foundation and Function in the Information Ecosystem" -- Panel presentations at ASIS- 2010

1. Marjorie Hlava: Introduction to the panel. (ppt)
2. Hollie White: Framing NKOS Evaluation: HIVE’s Approach. (ppt)
3. Denise A. D. Bedford: International Development Thesaurus – Moving Collaboration and Assessment Upstream (ppt)
4. Gail Hodge, Information International Associates (IIa): Evaluating NKOS in the EPA Enterprise: Supporting Real Ecosystems (ppt)

Web Service-based Applications: Optimizing Indexing, Searching, and Terminology Services, ASIST 2008 (Link to program description).

1. Rebecca Guenther. A Registry for controlled vocabularies at the Library of Congress (ppt)
   
2. Diane Vizine-Goetz. OCLC Terminology Services beta: Architecture & Standards (link)
   
3. Dongming Zhang. Developing a Webservice-based MeSH indexing Tool for Health Science Repository System (ppt)

Other NKOS Workshops and Sessions

• Metadata Modeling, Deep Image Annotation, and KOS Vocabulary Development for Digital Collections of Cultural Objects - NKOS Workshop at ICADL 2018, the 20th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries. Nov. 19-22, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
  
  
• Metadata Modeling and Knowledge Representation for Research Data, NKOS/DCMI workshop at ICADL 2016, the 18th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries. December 5-9, 2016, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
  
  
• Progress in NKOS, The First NKOS Workshop at ICADL
  December 9, 2015, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
  
  
• The Challenge of the Electronic Environment to the Organization of Knowledge: The 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://legacy.alexandria.ucsb.edu/gazetteer/dgie/DGIE_website/DGIE_homepage.htm

International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) conferences

• ISKO international conferences since 1990
• ISKO national and regional conferences
• Link to a list of all past, current, and future KO-related events in the world.
• ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization (IEKO)

International UDC Seminars

• International UDC Seminars are biennial conferences devoted to advances in documentary/bibliographic classification research and their application in a networked environment.
• Link to a list of all UDC Seminars
  

Archived early efforts

(See also NKOS Dublin Core Application Profile)

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)

Research projects for terminlogy services (early pioneers)

• OCLC Terminologies Service (retired November 20,2015)
  Provides access to multiple controlled vocabularies
  
  
• STAR (Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources)
  Semantic terminology services
  
  
• TRSS (Terminology Registry Scoping Study) | about (ppt)

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NKOS Listserv

• The NKOS list is hosted by OCLC.
  To send messages FOR DELIVERY TO THE WHOLE LIST, email to: NKOS-L@oclclists.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 attach files.

• Archive of NKOS discussion list messages from 6/2001 to 5/2007 was hosted at DLI2 server
• All NKOS discussion list messages' archive is now hosted at OCLC. The owner is Inkyung Choi choii@oclc.org
  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Questions and suggestions should be sent to mzeng at kent dot edu