In message <009501c4c642$5e2dfd70$0d49a8c0@timh>, Tim Henbrey
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Does anyone out there know if a digital version of SHIC is available
>anywhere?
I have a digital version (probably incomplete) which I converted to
Topic Map format as an experiment some time ago.
However, the question is more whether the SHIC Working Party is willing
for a digital version to be made available, and if so on what basis.
The next question is - what form should that digital version take?
>Gallery Systems are involved in various data migrations where SHIC numbers
>have been used in the legacy database. Clearly we can migrate these numbers,
>but the actual terms would be considerably more enlightening for most users!
Bear in mind that it wouldn't just be a matter of mapping numbers to
terms: SHIC is not a termlist. For example, many class numbers ending
in 9 are simply given the heading "OTHER" (1.99; 1.129; 1.149; ...).
You need to see the context within which a class heading sits, which
really requires machine-processible access to the full classification
system.
Progress is being made towards making classification systems and
thesauri available in machine-processible form. The BSI Working Party
on thesaurus construction aims to produce a proposal for a
machine-readable interchange format for thesauri, and the W3C thesaurus
mailing list ([log in to unmask]) is working towards an RDF
representation of ontologies in general.
Once we have an agreed interchange format, I would hope that there would
be a general move to make mla vocabulary resources available in this
format (ideally online as web services).
Richard
--
Richard Light
SGML/XML and Museum Information Consultancy
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