Knowledge base for subject area of knowledge organization : Issues, challenges, and preliminary outcomes of a research project
Abstract
The poster presents a research project of Czech knowledge base for subject area of knowledge organization. The project is based on the following hypotheses: 1) Knowledge organization depends on the natural language and specific cultural context, 2) The study of knowledge organization needs to be extended beyond the scope of memory institutions, 3) Knowledge organization is undergoing a paradigm shift, which hasn't been reflected so far in either Czech scholarly literature or terminology.
The knowledge base will provide background material for the current scientific monograph, it will serve as a resource for updating the Czech terminology, and as an education and training tool in the field of librarianship and information science. It will assemble and structure the current body of knowledge for the domain of knowledge organization and will enable for storing, browsing, and searching of existing knowledge as well as for discovering or inferencing of new knowledge in a defined domain.
The knowledge base will consist of conceptual model in ontology format, filled in by instances, i. e. by RDF statements and descriptive metadata about knowledge organization systems, persons, institutions, events, activities, tools, and other relevant resources. The results of first year of research are: 1) Our own clearly defined concept of knowledge organization both as a process and a discipline, based on a concept and process maps, 2) Conceptual model of a knowledge base, 3) Prototype of a knowledge base (about 1200 knowledge units - RDF statements, bibliographic metadata about documents and KOS's).
The plans for future research include: completion of knowledge acquisition, enhancing the types of knowledge units with procedural knowledge, implementation of a knowledge base and making it publicly available online in the form of Linked Open Data.