ASKOSI
Application Services
for Knowledge Organization
and Systems Integration
What is ASKOSI ?
...SI: ...Systems Integration
With the advent of SKOS, a W3C standard for thesaurus (authority lists, codification tables, taxonomies, etc.), it should become possible to better interconnect applications. Thesauri (and other codification systems) are making the link from the concepts (and their surroundings) to the terms that the users know: SKOS opens the path to much better semantical integration between business applications.
AS...: Application Services...
With the momentum of Web 2.0, there is an important opportunity to study the users benefits that a better management (and presentation) of thesauri could provide. Inter-operability is the key to cooperation between applications and competitions between software products.
...KO...: ...Knowledge Organization...
Today, having all information available and searchable is felt like "normal". But to make information more useful, more operational (some then call it "knowledge"), more organization is needed. Thesauri and Control Lists are providing the essential backbones for such information organization.
What are we doing ?
Users need evaluation...
Technology is nothing without users' benefits. ASKOSI first aim is to evaluate users practical needs and to establish goals for systems development.
Integration...
Much too often, it is very difficult to achieve real daily performance when using software systems from different developers. We will try to establish what really works and what doesn't when trying to integrate different SKOS aware software.
A simple goal...
Maximize the benefits of building thesauri and other reference lists by reusing existing information systems and by providing better management and presentation tools, well integrated in the applications the user needs daily.
and an invitation:
You are very welcome to propose ideas, projects, applications to discuss, software to evaluate or to integrate. A Wiki is open to your contributions and the ASKOSI demo server can host your vocabularies.