The study will analyse issues related to the potential delivery of a Terminology Registry as a shared infrastructure service within the JISC Information Environment. The study will consider how a Registry might support development of terminology and other services within the context of a services oriented environment. The role of a terminology registry will be considered in relation to other components of the information landscape, in particular with regard to other JISC IE shared infrastructure services, such as the JISC IE metadata registry (IEMSR) and the JISC IE service (and collection) registry (IESR). In addition the study will draw on experience of the use and development of terminology and ontology registries in other domains, particularly within the e-Learning and e-Science domains, and will draw on experience from international initiatives. The study will describe usage scenarios and use cases, investigate requirements and sustainability, study costs and benefits. It will look at organisational questions such as who is to create, maintain and host the content of the registry and at cooperation with similar registries. Architectural issues will be explored, in particular the potential for co-ordination of registry efforts within the JISC IE and across domains. The scoping study will make recommendations on which JISC can base decisions on future provision of a terminology registry.

Terminology Registry Scoping Study (TRSS)

Overview

A terminology registry lists, describes, identifies and points to sets of vocabularies available for use in information systems and services. It can cover free and publicly available, fee-based and restricted, or organisation-internal vocabularies.

Terminology registries can hold scheme level information only, or comprise the member terms, concepts and relationships as well, or even list services based on terminology (such as automatic classification, term expansion, disambiguation, translation, semantic reasoning).

Registries should, if used as a digital infrastructure service, make their content available for both comfortable human inspection and for machine-to-machine access.

Aims and objectives

The study’s overall aims are to:

  • inform the development of shared infrastructure for resource discovery
  • describe the scope and potential use of a terminology registry
  • analyse requirements for services based on a terminology registry
  • help stakeholders understand the need for this component of a shared infrastructure

In order to meet these aims the study will have the following objectives:

  • develop a set of usage scenarios and use cases that demonstrate how and why a terminology registry as a shared infrastructure service is required
  • gather these requirements from various sources, such as documentation from JISC projects and IE architecture papers; prior work elsewhere; contact with key stakeholders
  • synthesise the outcomes of efforts to date, from JISC activities and the wider context
  • include the international and commercial context
  • identify potential risks related to terminology registries as shared services

Project methodology

The study will focus on identifying relevant information available from prior efforts (see Background section) and project documentation, supplemented by information obtained through email, telephone calls and a small number of face-to-face meetings. The study will also use expertise available at UKOLN and the partners to inform the study in appropriate areas.

The study will comprise the following strands

  • Requirements usage scenarios, prior and related work, functionality, content
  • Role of Registry priorities for content and functionalities to meet requirements
  • Architecture and Technologies overview of relevant technologies
  • Governance and organisational issues quality control, policies, sustainability, business models, cost benefits

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

The final report synthesising the outcomes of the scoping study, will be preceded by an intermediate report, which will form the basis for further discussions with JISC and to prompt feedback from stakeholders.The final version of the scoping study will be published on the websites of JISC and the partners. It will be widely advertised in relevant national and international lists, blogs and fora and presented at workshops and conferences, e.g. at NKOS workshops 2007, digital library and repository related conferences and at JISC programme events.

Lead institution

UKOLN The University of Bath

Project partners
  • UKOLN - The University of Bath
  • University of Glamorgan, Hypermedia Research Unit
  • Non-funded supporting partners: OCLC Office of Research, USA

Project Staff

Project Manager & Team
  • Koraljka Golub, Research Officer, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, Tel +44 (0) 1225 383619 k.golub@ukoln.ac.uk

Project Team
  • Douglas Tudhope, School of Computing, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL, Wales Tel: (+1443) 482271, Fax: (+1443) 482715 dstudhope@glam.ac.uk

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