Florence–Washington Round Trip: Ways and Intersections between Semantic Indexing Tools in Different Languages

Abstract

This article presents an Italian experience of developing streamlined semantic interoperability between the Italian Thesaurus of Nuovo soggettario and the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). This ongoing project must take into consideration the differences between the two indexing tools, while the criteria on which the resulting actions are based are being clarified continually. Reciprocal interoperability, thanks to the Simple Knowledge Organization System format, enables us to create links with English language subject headings. The National Central Library of Florence is studying methods of automatically catching LCSH equivalents and the question of how to take advantage of both Semantic Web outputs and the multilingual dataset of Wikidata.

KEYWORDS:

• linked data
• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
• Nuovo soggettario
• indexing vocabularies
• interoperability
• subject access

Notes

¹ Nuovo soggettario system, http://thes.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/ (accessed December 29, 2014). For a description of the Nuovo soggettario system, see: Alberto Cheti, Anna Lucarelli, and Federica Paradisi, “Subject Indexing in Italy: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives,” International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control 39, no. 3 (2010): 47–52.

² For more details on the thesaurus, see: Luciana Franci et al., “The Nuovo Soggettario Thesaurus: Structural Features and Web Application Projects,” in Subject Access: Preparing for the Future, ed. Patrice Landry et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter Saur, 2011), 155–168.

³ Several studies and reports demonstrate that there has been interest in this topic for many years; for example, Stella G. Dextre Clarke and Marcia Lei Zeng, “From ISO 2788 to ISO 25964: The Evolution of Thesaurus Standards towards Interoperability and Data Modeling,” Information Standards Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2012): 20–26, http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/8289/SP_clarke_zeng_isqv24no1.pdf; Stella G. Dextre Clarke, “Thesauri, Interoperability and the Role of ISO 25964” (paper presented at the meeting Search Solutions 2012: Innovations in Web & Enterprise Search, Thursday, November 29, Covent Garden, London), http://irsg.bcs.org/SearchSolutions/2012/sse2012.php; Stella G. Dextre Clarke, “ISO 2788 + ISO 5964 + Much Energy = ISO 25964,” Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 35, no. 1 (2008): 31–33, http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-08/OctNov08_DextreClark.pdf; Stella G. Dextre Clarke, “ISO 25964: A Standard in Support of KOS Interoperability” (paper presented at the meeting, Facets of Knowledge Organization: A Tribute to Professor Brian Vickery 1918–2009, ISKO UK Biennial Conference, July 4–5, 2011, London), http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/dextreclarke.pdf; Leonard Will, “The ISO 25964 Data Model for the Structure of an Information Retrieval Thesaurus,” in Categories, Contexts and Relations in Knowledge Organization Proceedings of the Twelfth International ISKO Conference, 6­–9 August 2012, Mysore, India, eds. A. Neelameghan and K. S. Raghavan (Würzburg: Ergon, 2012), 284–290, http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/Will_ISKO2012_paper.doc (accessed October 15, 2014).

⁴ “Concepts in Context. Cologne Conference on Interoperability and Semantics in Knowledge Organization,” http://linux2.fbi.fh-koeln.de/cisko2010/index_en.html (accessed October 15, 2014).

⁵ “Global Interoperability and Linked Data in Libraries,” http://www.linkedheritage.eu/linkeddataseminar/ (accessed October 15, 2014).

⁶ Stella G. Dextre Clarke, “In Pursuit of Interoperability,” in Concepts in Context. Cologne Conference on Interoperability and Semantics in Knowledge Organization, 19–20 July (Cologne, Germany: Ergon Verlag, 2011), http://ixtrieve.fh-koeln.de/cisko2010/praesentationen/2010-07-20_dextre_clarke.ppt [slides], http://linux2.fbi.fh-koeln.de/cisko2010/mp3/2-01_dextre_clarke.mp3 [mp3] (accessed October 15, 2014).

⁷ International Organization for Standardization, Information and Documentation, ISO 25964-1: 2011: Thesauri and Interoperability with Other Vocabularies. Part 1: Thesauri for Information Retrieval ([Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization, 2011); International Organization for Standardization, Information and Documentation, ISO 25964-2: 2013 Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies. Part 2: Interoperability with Other Vocabularies (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization, 2013). For more information on Part 2, see Stella Dextre Clarke, “Applying ISO25964 to Thesaurus Mapping and Other Forms of Linkage,” in the 13th European Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop held during the DL2014 Conference in London, September 11–12, 2014, https://at-web1.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/research/hypermedia/nkos/nkos2014/content/NKOS2014-presentation-dextreclarke-ISO25964Mappings.pdf (accessed October 15, 2014).

⁸ For more about the interoperability between an Italian universal thesaurus and a specific thesaurus, see: Elisabetta Viti, “Interoperabilità fra thesauri generali e thesauri specialistici in ambito economico-finanziario. Il caso del Nuovo soggettario” (PhD diss. Università degli studi di Udine, 2012), http://dspace-uniud.cilea.it/bitstream/10990/72/1/Tesi%20di%20dottorato%20in%20Scienze%20bibliogra-fiche%20%28XXIV%20ciclo%29-Universit%C3%A0%20degli%20studi%20di%20Udine-Elisabetta%20Viti.pdf (accessed October 15, 2014); Elisabetta Viti, “Interoperabilità fra thesauri generali e thesauri specialistici in ambito economico-finanziario. Il caso del Nuovo soggettario Sintesi e risultati di un progetto di ricerca,” in 1. Seminario nazionale di biblioteconomia: didattica e ricerca nell’università italiana e confronti internazionali, Roma, 30–31 maggio 2013, (Milano: Ledizioni, 2013), http://w3.uniroma1.it/seminario-biblioteconomia/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Viti_Elisabetta.pdf (accessed October 15, 2014).

⁹ Dextre Clarke and Zeng, “From ISO 2788 to ISO 25964,” 20–21.

¹⁰ “SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System—Home Page,” 2014, http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/ (accessed October 15, 2014).

¹¹ “Nuovo Soggettario Thesaurus,” http://thes.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/ricerca_eng.php (accessed October 15, 2014).

¹² “AGROVOC,” http://aims.fao.org/website/AGROVOC-Thesaurus/sub (accessed October 15, 2014).

¹³ About the conversion testing, see: Giovanni Bergamin and Anna Lucarelli, “The Nuovo soggettario as a Service for the Linked Data World” (paper presented at the meeting Global Interoperability and Linked Data in Libraries, University of Florence, June 18–19, 2012); Giovanni Bergamin and Anna Lucarelli, “La conversione dei metadati del Thesaurus del Nuovo soggettario nel formato SKOS/RDF” (paper presented at the Università La Sapienza, Rome May 3, 2013). About the conversion of RAMEAU and LCSH to the RDF Semantic Web format, see: Antoine Isaac and Thierry Bouchet, “RAMEAU et SKOS: une expérimentation,” Arabesques, no. 54 (2009), http://rameau.bnf.fr/informations/pdf/arabesques54_art_isaac_bouchet.pdf (accessed October 15, 2014); Ed Summers, Antoine Isaac, Clay Redding, and Dan Krech, “LCSH, SKOS and Linked Data” (papers and project reports presented at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Berlin, September 22–26, 2008), http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/view/916/912 (accessed October 15, 2014). For another implementation of the SKOS model, see: Sirje Nilbe and Tiiu Tarkpea, “Using the Estonian Subject Thesaurus in the Digital Environment,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2014): 32–41.

¹⁴ “Thesaurus Availability by Formats and Standard Protocols,” http://thes.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/thes-dati_eng.htm (accessed October 15, 2014).

¹⁵ “Library of Congress Subject Headings,” http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html (accessed October 15, 2014).

¹⁶ Seth van Hooland et al., “Evaluating the Success of Vocabulary Reconciliation for Cultural Heritage Collections,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64, no. 3 (2013): 464–479.

¹⁷ Treccani is the most prestigious universal Italian encyclopedia, and has been linked to the NS since 2009. As of October 2014, there are nearly 10,000 links.

¹⁸ Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Nuovo soggettario. Guida al sistema italiano di indicizzazione per soggetto. Prototipo del Thesaurus (Milano: Editrice Bibliografica, © 2006).

¹⁹ “Criteri (§ Termini non appartenenti ai nomi comuni inseriti nel Thesaurus),” http://thes.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/criteri.php?menuR=2&menuS=2 (accessed October 15, 2014).

²⁰ For example, Futurisme (cinéma), http://catalogue.bnf.fr/servlet/autorite?ID=15925840&id-Noeud=1.1&host=catalogue (accessed October 15, 2014).

²¹ “MACS: Multilingual Access to Subjects,” http://www.nb.admin.ch/nb_professionnel/projekt-arbeit/00729/00733/index.html?lang=en (accessed October 15, 2014). In 2008 the Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze took an interest in this project and the Bibliotèque Nationale Suisse (BN) tested the compatibility of Italian subject strings with headings of other indexing languages in the MACS link management interface (LMI). BNCF placed 116 headings of Music, 146 headings of Religion, and 203 of Natural science and Mathematics, which linked with target languages of RAMEAU and SWD. The results of this mapping were satisfactory with approximately 85% equivalents. In the majority of cases the equivalences were exact but also there were some partial equivalences and some equivalences between one term from Nuovo Soggettario and one subject string from the other indexing languages (RAMEAU, LCSH, and SWD).

²² Piero Cavaleri, “WebDewey Italiana,” Biblioteche oggi XXXII, no. 1 (2014), http://www.bibliotecheoggi.it/2014/20140102301.pdf (accessed October 15, 2014).

²³ “WIKIMEDIA Italia,” http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Info (accessed October 15, 2014).

²⁴ The Introduction to Wikidata states, “Multilingual. Editing, consuming, browsing, and reusing the data is fully multilingual. Data entered in any language is immediately available in all other languages; editing in any language is possible and encouraged.” 2014, http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction (accessed October 15, 2014).

²⁵ John Mark Ockerbloom, “Forward to Libraries: Experiences Connecting Digital Libraries, Local Libraries, and Wikipedia” (presented at the Digital Library Federation Forum, Austin, Texas, November 2013), http://works.bepress.com/john_mark_ockerbloom/16/ (accessed October 15, 2014).

²⁶ “Magnus’ Tools on wmflabs,” http://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/ (accessed October 15, 2014).