future of vocabularies

Future of vocabularies

14 November 2013

SCIS and linked data

Ben Chadwick, Metadata analyst

Where are we now?

2012• Why vocabularies? • How to manage multiple

vocabularies?

2013• Linked data• Curriculum vocabularies

Reynolds, Leo 2006, niche, CC-by-nc-sa

Controlled vocabularies

"High levels of precision and recall, the two ways in which we judge any information retrieval system, are dependent on controlled vocabularies and national and international standards - they cannot be obtained by other systems not involving human intervention.”

Michael Gorman foreword to Conversations with Catalogers in the 21st Century, Libraries Unlimited, 2011 (p. viii)

How do vocabularies help search?

• Search expansion and faceting• Navigation and browsing• Collections• Redirects (“See”)• Related topics (“See also”)• Mapping between repositories

scot.curriculum.edu.au/search.asp

Australian Education Vocabularies

ScOT thesaurus

scot.curriculum.edu.au

o About school curriculum and the teaching professiono 9232 conceptso 10 top conceptso 9441 broader/narrower

relationso 7775 alternate labels/

synonymso Used since 2003 for tagging

education resourceso Used since 2011 to tag the

Australian Curriculum

About ScOT

API – SPARQL and RESTful

Ecosystems

http://vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/scot/2458

Ecosystems

Biodiversity; Biogeochemical cycles; Bioindicators; Biomes; Competition (Ecology); Ecological niches; Ecological succession; Food webs; Habitats; Land degradation; Native species; Populations (Ecology); Symbiosis

Ecology

Use for resources about communities of living organisms interacting with each other and with their environment, including the processes that take place.

生態系 ; 生态系统 ; Mātauranga taupuhi kaiao; Ekosistem; بيئي Ökosystem; Οικοσύστημα; Ecosistema; 생태계 ;نظام ;

Hệ sinh thái; Ekosistem; Ecosistema; पा�रि�स्थि�तिक �त्र; Écosystème

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85040752#concept

http://dbpedia.org/resource/Ecosystem

• Unique Identifiers for concepts• Linked to other unique identifiers (inside and

outside the vocabulary)• Open:

– Available for consumption on the open web– Expressed in a standard, machine-readable

format (RDF)

ScOT as Linked Open Data

e-Portfolio

teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au/elements

Australian Curriculum

australiancurriculum.edu.au

Architecture of the curriculum

Learning Areas

• English• Mathematics• Science• History• Geography

• Arts F-10• Health & Phys Ed F-10• Civics and Citizenship 3-10• Economics & Business 5-

10• Languages F-10• Technologies F-10• Work Studies 9-10

Cross-curriculum priorities

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

• Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

• Sustainability

ScOT in curriculum content descriptions

Warning: XML ahead!

Tagging the curriculumo 1000+ taggedo 5 curriculum areas

published so faro ACARA endorsed

Aligning existing resources to the Australian Curriculum one of three top priorities of school library staff

Schools want Curriculum Alignment

Softlink 2013 Australian School Library Survey

Adriaen van Utrecht, 1647 Public Domain

Scootle

www.scootle.edu.au

Tagging resources

20,000 resources tagged in Scootle

350,000 resources tagged in SCIS MARC records

o Common vocabularyo Leverage past taggingo Exploit hierarchy

Inference

Curriculum

Link content with high correlation of SCOT

tags

ScOT in Australian Curriculum

Curriculum

Link content with high correlation of SCOT tags

Exploiting the hierarchy

ScOT’s Curriculum Connect tool

• Curriculum alignment: to MARC or not to MARC?• Old records without ScOT terms• Non-subject vocabularies: Audience? Learning area?• Increased records for digital learning resources• Retrospective updates of schools’ SCIS records• Viability of Linked Open Data (LOD) authorities?• A new model for Authority File subscriptions?• Viability of LOD records. What would this mean?

Directions for SCIS

658 Curriculum Objective Element

Curriculum vocabularies in MARC

Number of records with this field in WorldCat:• 4,679 total as of 1 Jul 2013• overall number of holdings: 63,847

SCIS Subject Headings test project

http://stage.poolparty.vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/scis.html

Concept display

LOD for Bib Records – final thoughts

What would it mean for SCIS? For systems?• Capacity to pull data. Automatic updating• Local copies versus dynamic querying

Exposing local holdings to the web, with semantic markup • LRMI (schema.org)• BIBFRAME (Library of Congress)

Useful links

Pages URL

ScOT scot.curriculum.edu.au

Solutions scot.curriculum.edu.au/solutions

Curriculum Connect scot.curriculum.edu.au/indexing

API vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au/PoolParty/sparql/scot

Downloads vocabulary.curriculum.edu.au

ScOT blog schoolsonlinethesaurus.edublogs.org

SCIS Subject Headings esa.edu.au/scis

SCIS blog scis.edublogs.org