Opportunity to help make HILT’s terminology services useful in your information service
The JISC -funded HILT project is looking to make contact with staff in information services or projects interested in helping it test and refine its developing terminology services. The project is currently working to create pilot web services that will deliver machine-readable terminology and cross-terminology mappings data likely to be useful to information services wishing to extend or enhance the efficacy of their subject search or browse services. Based on SRW/U , SOAP , and SKOS , the HILT facilities, when fully operational, will permit such services to improve their own subject search and browse mechanisms by using HILT data in a fashion transparent to their users. On request, HILT will serve up machine-processable data on individual subject schemes (broader terms, narrower terms, hierarchy information, preferred and non-preferred terms, and so on) and interoperability data (usually intellectual or automated mappings between schemes, but the architecture allows for the use of other methods) – data that can be used to enhance user services. The project is also developing an associated toolkit that will help service technical staff to embed HILT-related functionality into their services. The primary aim is to serve JISC funded information services or services at JISC institutions, but information services outside the JISC domain may also find the proposed services useful and wish to participate in the test and refine process.
Although the primary focus of the work is to improve interoperability during cross-search or browse by subject, the facilities offered can also be used for other purposes. Examples of possible uses include:
- Providing the best terms for a subject search in a remote service that uses a subject scheme unfamiliar to ‘home service’ users. HILT currently has the following KOS mounted and available: AAT, CAB, GCMD, HASSET, IPSV, LCSH, MeSH, NMR, SCAS, UNESCO, and DDC.
- Improving recall in a subject search of one or more databases by enriching the set of terms known to a user by providing synonyms and related terms.
- Generating an interactive browse structure where a scheme is arranged hierarchically.
- Taking a user’s subject term and using it to identify available information services with subject coverage relevant to the query via collections and/or services databases such as IESR and SCONE
The project is also looking to test other associated facilities it intends to offer for embedding in JISC or institutional information services – for example a spell-check mechanism and machine to machine delivery of Wordnet data.
The test and refine process is likely to begin towards the end of March 2008 and continue for at least six months beyond that. Individuals or services interested in participating, should begin by joining the HILT-Collaborators email list at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=hilt-collaborators&A=1 .
Note that, at this stage, both the facilities and the subject schemes are only being made available for testing purposes – to allow services to help us test and refine them (and, in time, evaluate their usefulness). They cannot and should not be built into operational services.
HILT Web page
HILT Contacts page
Posted by: Andy McGregor
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