The term knowledge organization system (KOS) is intended to encompass all types of schemes for organizing information and promoting knowledge management. Different families of knowledge organization systems, including thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems, and taxonomies are widely recognized and applied in both modern and traditional information systems. Various types of KOS have been increasingly embodied as (Web) services to facilitate resource discovery and retrieval. Different agents, services, and applications need to communicate about KOS data in the form of transferring, exchange, transformation, mediation, migration, and integration. The information about a KOS, including its data model, type, protocol, status, responsible body, available format, affectivity, and other descriptive data are very important to terminology registries, service registries, vocabulary users (machine or human), and retrieval systems. At a minimum level, metadata for KOS resources will describe specific characteristics of a KOS, facilitate the discovery of KOS resources, assist in the evaluation of such resources for a particular application or use, and facilitate sharing, reusing, and collaboration of the KOS resources.

Currently there is no protocol for describing KOS resources. The DCMI/NKOS Task Group targets to develop a Dublin Core Application Profile for KOS resources based on the work the NKOS group[1] members have already done during the last decade. The application profile will be further tested by professionals and researchers.

Related to this DC Application Profile is a KOS Type vocabulary. It will include various types of KOS, defined based on characteristics such as structure and complexity, the relationships between concepts, and historical function.

[1] http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/

The 2-year project will have two phases for development and testing/evaluation. The Task Group's goal is to present the draft specification by DC2010 conference and start the testing from then. The draft specification will include the application profile, the KOS Type Vocabulary, and related best practice guides.

Phase I: Development

• Set up DCMI-NKOS Working Group, to involve experts and the community. (Ongoing during December 2009 and beyond)
• Review current research results derived from various projects of the NKOS group members. (Internal report by Mid-January 2010)
• Develop a functional requirements specification, outlining what kinds of functionality the application profile is intended to support. (Draft by end-March 2010)
• Develop a simple entity-relationship model on which the application profile can be based. (Same time-frame as above: Draft by end-March 2010)
• Develop a Dublin Core application profile corresponding to the model. (draft by end of June 2010)
• Revise and finalize KOS Type vocabulary (draft by the end of June 2010)
• Online expert review period (one month review in July 2010, for the AP draft and the KOS Type Vocabulary)
• Revision of the AP and the KOS Type Vocabulary (by the end of September, to be ready for workshop in DC-2010 conference)
• Report preliminary results and discuss at the NKOS Workshops (U.S. and ECDL) in 2010 (schedule to be decided in 2010)

Phase II: Testing/Evaluation

• Develop AP Beta and the KOS Type Vocabulary Beta based on DC2010 workshop result (by mid-November 2010)
• Conduct testing (self- and invited) at extended KOS resources registries and directories (by end-February 2011)
• Collect examples and develop a set of best practices guidelines for each of the properties in the application profile (draft by the end-April 2011)
• Online expert and community review of whole specification (AP, Vocabulary, Best Practices) (starting in May, depending on the progress, till end of August 2011)
• Liaise with the DC Architecture WG to ensure overall compatibility with the DCMI Abstract Model (Ongoing until end September 2011)
• Release the final Dublin Core Application Profile for KOS Resources (before DC2011 conference)

All work will be undertaken through a working group mailing list, face to face meetings at DC-2010 conference and NKOS workshops, and a working Wiki.

Co-chairs of the Task Group:

• Gail Hodge
  Information International Associates, Inc. (IIa), USA
  ghodge@iiaweb.com

• Marcia Zeng
  School of Information and Library Science,
  Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA
  mzeng@kent.edu http://www.slis.kent.edu/~mzeng/

KOS Experts:

• Diane Vizine-Goetz, OCLC Research, USA, http://www.oclc.org/research/staff/vizine-goetz.htm
• Marjie Hlava, Access Innovations, Inc. http://www.accessinn.com/about_us/About_us.html
• Denise Bedford, Kent State University and World Bank http://iakm.kent.edu/people/faculty/denise-bedford
• Doug Tudhope, University of Glamorgan, UK, http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/people/tudhope/
• Traugott Koch, Max Planck Digital Library, Germany, http://www.mpdl.mpg.de/staff/tkoch/
• Koraljka Golub, UKOLN, UK, http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/k.golub/
• Dennis Nicholson, University of Strathclyde, UK. http://www.strath.ac.uk/cdlr/staff/nicholsondennis/
• Marianne Lykke Nielsen, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark, http://www.db.dk/mln
• Ahsan Morshed, Food and Agricultural Organization of UN (FAO), Rome, Italy. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AhsanMorshed
• Maja Zumer, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/biblio/oddelek/osebje/zumer.html
• & others who are active in NKOS activities.

Allinson, Julie, Johnston, Pete and Powell, Andy. (2007). 'A Dublin Core Application Profile for scholarly works'. Ariadne, vol. 50, January 2007. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue50/allinson-et-al/[1]

Golub,Koraljka and Tudhope, Douglas. (2008). 'JISC Terminology Registry Scoping Study (TRSS) report'. The report is published on JISC's TRSS project webpage. Revised 2009http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/sharedservices/trss-report-final.pdf[2]

Hodge, G.; Salokhe, G.; Zolly, L.; Anderson, N. (2007). Terminology Resource Registry: Descriptions for Humans and Computers. Presentation at Integrating Standards in Practice, 10th Open Forum on Metadata Registries, New York City, NY USA, July 9-11, 2007. http://www.metadataopenforum.org/index.php?id=21,74,0,0,1,0 [3]

ISO/IEC 11179, Information Technology – Metadata registries (MDR) http://metadata-standards.org/11179/[4]

Kendall. E. Metadata Support for OMG's Emerging Ontology & Vocabulary Management Initiative. Joint OOR-OntologySummit2008 Panel Discussion: "Developing an Ontology of Ontologies for OOR" http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2008_04_10[5]

OCLC Terminology Services (Experimental Services for Controlled Vocabularies, a project of OCLC Research) meta — Controlled vocabulary metadata http://tspilot.oclc.org/meta/?operation=explain&version=1.1