Establishing a Multi-Thesauri-Scenario based on SKOS and Cross-Concordances

Abstract

This case study proposes a scenario with three topic-related thesauri, which have been connected with bilateral cross-concordances as part of a major terminology mapping initiative in the project KoMoHe (Mayr et al., 2008). The thesauri have already been or will be converted to SKOS and in order to not omit the relevant crosswalks, the mapping properties of SKOS will be used for modeling them adequately. The participating thesauri in this approach are: (i) TheSoz (Thesaurus for the Social Sciences, GESIS) which has been converted to SKOS in a first experimental version (Zapilko et al., 2009), an update is underway which will be oriented on the introduced SKOS extensions of the EUROVOC thesaurus (Smedt, 2009) and will use SKOS-XL additionally, (ii) STW (Standard-Thesaurus for Economics, ZBW) which has also been published in SKOS format (Neubert, 2009) and (iii) IBLK-Thesaurus (SWP). Currently, the conversion of vocabularies to SKOS is an active research area, but there are still unsolved and relevant issues which could not be treated satisfyingly yet. Our approach focuses on the application of existing crosswalks to the SKOS mapping properties and the establishment of a linked data application based on those connected thesauri.