2023-10-11 –, Conference room
In the era of the Semantic Web, where data integration and interoperability are paramount, terminologies and thesauri play a crucial role in unlocking the full potential of linked data. This lightning talk emphasises the need for organisations and networks to effectively manage these controlled vocabularies.
This became apparent within the TAG-project, a project initiated by MoMu with the aim to unite and enhance the digital textile heritage in Flanders. We will showcase the practical implementation of Opentheso (an open source thesaurus management tool) during the project, where it has been successfully utilised to clean, enrich, and restructure the multilingual Europeana Fashion Thesaurus.
By making use of Semantic Web standards like SKOS and by using persistent identifiers (e.g. arks), the results become available as linked data and can easily be integrated into other applications. The tool also offers collaboration opportunities like a 'proposal module' that can be used to discuss and manage the workflows for adding new terms.
Given our initial lack of awareness about Opentheso at the start of the project, we believe others might also be unaware of its existence. Therefore, we would like to share the positive experiences we had.
Attendees will learn about the functionalities of Opentheso (thesaurus creation, alignment, collaboration, re-use) and why taking ownership of your own controlled vocabularies might benefit organisations or networks. We will also touch upon possible pitfalls, encountered difficulties and the importance of web standards.
Tobias Hendrickx has been working at MoMu since 2012, starting with the Europeana Fashion project, he is since passionate about linked open data, innovation through open source solutions, and adhering to standards.