IAU thesaurus in RDF (an update)

[Norman Gray]

Rick and co, hello.

On 2007 Oct 8, at 15:42, Frederic V. Hessman wrote:

>> Too bad we can't get the list onto a good Wiki site..... (hint,  
>> hint, hint): I'm happy to do more than my share of editorial work,  
>> but if ya'll start to mess with the ontological info, the job will  
>> get gigantic.

We could use the IVOA wiki.  Just put the trex.txt on a page there  
and edit away.  As long as no-one breaks the formatting, the result  
can always be converted to SKOS mechanically (major downside: the  
labelling and UCD-equivalence work that Rick has done would then have  
to be edited back in somehow).

Alternatively, back on 25 September, Tony mentioned <http:// 
ontowiki.net/Projects/Powl> and <http://ontowiki.net/Projects/ 
OntoWiki>.  They're more for ontologies than vocabularies, but might  
still be useful.

>> Is infrared_radiation synonymous with infrared_emission?
>
> A good example of how Shobbrook^2 put in more casual terms which  
> librarians might encounter in astronomical texts but without any  
> formal physical need.

Indeed.  I think it's valuable to remember that this use is where the  
thesaurus came from, and that this represents the use we are (I  
claim) focusing on here, namely 'searching', broadly considered.

Further down the line, we must rely on ontologies to do heavier  
lifting -- Ed has made this point forcefully.  We're talking here  
about using vocabulary-based filtering to route VOEvent packets ("I  
want SN packets; this is an SN1b, which is a NT of SN; so keep it"):  
that's perfectly feasible using the BT/NT relations in the  
vocabularies we have at present.  However it might be more rationally  
be done using ontological relations, and any more sophisticated  
classification work would be an abuse of vocabularies.  But an  
ontology is a different product, and the numerous examples like this  
scattered all through the Thesaurus would make it a poor starting- 
point for such an ontology.

Or so I assert.  I know that Ed and I disagree about how poor it  
would be in practice; all I want to do here is suggest that we  
shouldn't delay ourselves by worrying about these sort of 'anomalies'  
in a searching-oriented vocabulary.

All the best,

Norman


-- 
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Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester, UK