4. HASSET Concept Scheme

HASSET is currently available as a SKOS Concept Scheme. Concepts, their labels, relations and notes are the basic notions for an RDF /SKOS/XKOS concept scheme.

• Concepts are ‘units of thought’ that exist in a domain. Concepts are represented by terms. In SKOS concepts are formalised as skos:concept, identified by dereferenceable URIs (URLs). In Skosmos, URIs are shown on each concept page.

• Terms are the actual names used to refer to a concept. For example, PUBLIC HEALTH, HOUSING, etc.

Labels are expressed by means of SKOS predicates:

• skos:prefLabel is used for ‘Preferred Term’ in classical thesaurus terminology

• skos:altLabel is used for ‘Non-Preferred’ or’ Use For’ term in classical thesaurus terminology.

Relations

• Hierarchical relations between concepts are expressed in SKOS by the predicates skos:broader and skos:narrower, which correspond to the classical thesaurus relations Broader/Narrower Term (BT/NT).

• Non-hierarchical relations express a notion of ’relatedness’ between concepts and are represented in SKOS via the skos:related predicate, which corresponds to the classical thesaurus relation Related Term (RT).

Notes

• Definitions are expressed as ‘skos:definition’

• Scope Notes are expressed as ‘skos:scopeNote’

• History Notes are expressed as ‘skos:historyNote’

• Definition Sources are expressed as ‘xkos:additionalContentNote’

The table below shows the correspondence between SKOS names, those used in Skosmos (see the Using HASSET page) and the previous HASSET Thesaurus Management System (TMS).