Hi Yitzchak,

Probably the quickest explanation is to look at the first few slides
from a presentation that I gave on SKOS at the Open Forum on Metadata
Registries last year...
http://www.slideshare.net/jonphipps/skos-2007-open-forum-on-metadata-
registries-nyc/

Currently, SKOS is headed towards being a W3C recommendation. There's
a new RFC draft of the SKOS Primer...
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-primer-20080221/

 From the new primer: "SKOS — Simple Knowledge Organisation System —
provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of
concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject
heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other types of
controlled vocabulary. As an application of the Resource Description
Framework (RDF) SKOS allows concepts to be documented, linked and
merged with other data, while still being composed, integrated and
published on the World Wide Web."

But comparing SKOS to other projects in Libraryland is liable to be
anything but quick, imho. There are other standard methods for
describing thesauri and vocabularies (Z39.19, ISO2788/5964, BS8723 --
and see http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/SWAD/thes_links.htm), but none that
I'm aware of that are as rdf-centric as SKOS.

Hope this gives you a better place to start,

Jon Phipps
Cornell University Library


On Mar 4, 2008, at 9:55 AM, Yitzchak Schaffer wrote:

> Greetings all:
>
> Many thanks to all the presenters for a great conference!
>
> One thing that people kept mentioning was SKOS.  That was a duhh point
> for me; I just took a look at the w3.org and Wikipedia pages on it,
> but
> it doesn't look like something I can spend time trying to figure out
> right now. Does anyone have a quick explanation comparing this to
> other
> projects/concepts in Libraryland?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> --
> Yitzchak Schaffer
> Systems Librarian
> Touro College Libraries
> 33 West 23rd Street
> New York, NY 10010
> Tel (212) 463-0400 x230
> Fax (212) 627-3197
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