Keelelist

Keelelist is a term that appears in some discussions of data organization and metadata modeling to describe a structured, cross-referenced listing of items. In this usage, a keeelist combines the simplicity of a linear list with the navigability of a graph, allowing each item to link to related items while preserving a primary order.

The origin of the term is not widely documented. It seems to be a compound of "Keele" and "list," with the "Keele" element possibly referencing an institution or a person associated with early discussions of the concept. No single inventor is universally credited, and the term is largely found in niche or theoretical writings rather than standard terminology.

A keeelist item typically includes an identifier, descriptive metadata, and optional links to related items such as parent, child, synonym, or cross-reference. The structure lends itself to implementations as a set of records in a relational table with self-referential foreign keys, or as nodes and edges in a graph database.

Keelelists have been proposed for use in digital libraries, taxonomies, knowledge graphs, and project directories where both sequential ordering and relational connectivity are important.

Variants of keeelist exist, and the concept overlaps with related ideas such as cross-referenced lists, catalogs, and ontologies. The lack of standardized definitions means adoption is limited and interoperability can require custom mappings.

See also: catalog, taxonomy, ontology, knowledge graph, linked data.