NKOS Workshop at DCMI 2026

Abstract

The NKOS workshop explores the potential of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), such as classification systems, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, and lexical databases, in the context of current developments and possibilities in the digital humanities and the new AI age. This workshop will include presentations and demonstrations on work related to the primary themes of KOS mappings and user interaction with KOS in information retrieval applications. The workshop format will allow projects to report results, newcomers to interact with established people in the field, while facilitating discussions of topical issues which require consensus or coordination, including standards efforts.

1 Introduction

This July and August brings researchers, scholars and practitioners to South Korea for one or more international conferences concerned broadly with digital humanities and related disciplines including DH2026, IFLA2026, as well as DCMI2026. An in person NKOS Workshop with optional online participation will be held at DCMI, the twenty-fourth International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, being held August 3-7 at the National Library of Korea in Seoul.

2 NKOS Workshop Objectives

The NKOS workshop aims to explore the potential of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), such as classification systems, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, and lexical databases, in the context of current developments and possibilities in the digital humanities and the new AI age. These KOS tools help to model the underlying semantic structure of the domain for purposes of information retrieval, knowledge discovery, language engineering, semantic standards and knowledge graphs. KOS technologies do not only shape how knowledge is organized but are fundamental in determining what entities can be expressed, what relationships are central and how perspectives are shaped, configuring the very possibilities of knowledge creation. In the context of digital humanities such technologies can serve as carriers of cultural memory and scholarly expression on a global scale. Articulating nuances and transmitting cultural knowledge, particularly as we move toward more sophisticated Linked Data and AI approaches, KOS can address challenges in developing multilingual thesauri, cross-cultural ontologies, and classification systems that don't only privilege Western epistemologies. The workshop will provide an opportunity to discuss projects, research and development activities, evaluation approaches, lessons learned, and research findings. A further objective is to systematically engage in discussions in common areas of interest with selected related communities and to investigate potential cooperation.

The workshop will also allow projects to report results, newcomers to interact with established people in the field, while facilitating discussions of topical issues which require consensus or coordination, including standards efforts. Thus, for example, previous workshops have seen focused discussion on KOS in AI and AI in KOS, drafts of ISO KOS standards, the W3C SKOS standard, the interface between traditional library and information science vocabularies and Semantic Web efforts, KOS linked data, social tagging and its relation to established vocabularies, KOS metadata and the different types of KOS, and the use of KOS in artificial intelligence (AI). The National Library of Korea venue affords participation by KOS researchers and developers from different perspectives, such as KOS design and construction, API and service developers, user-oriented issues, and management of KOS in registries.

3 NKOS Workshop Themes

The workshop has two themes as the main focus:

• (1) KOS mappings.

  • a. Mappings (or alignment) between KOS is attracting increasing attention with the expression of KOS as Linked Data and multilingual archives.

  • b. Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI including Gen AI, machine learning, neural networks, etc.) as tools for KOS mapping methods and practical experience.

• (2) User interaction with KOS in retrieval including semantic search.

Further presentations/demonstrations will be selected from the following topics:

• (3) Automatic/AI KOS-based subject indexing / classification / entity-extraction.
• (4) KOS-based recommender systems.
• (5) Meaningful concept display and meaningful visualization of KOS.
• (6) Semantic standards developments.
• (7) Evaluation of KOS-based systems – methods and practical experience.
• (8) KOS in e-Research metadata contexts.
• (9) KOS and e-Learning.
• (10) Use of KOS in Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications -- methods and practical experience.