SKOSia

SKOSia is a fictional, open-source platform described as a comprehensive knowledge-organization system built on the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). It serves as an illustrative example for libraries, museums, and educational repositories seeking to model thesauri, taxonomies, and classification schemes using SKOS concepts. The description below presents SKOSia as a case study for educational purposes and does not refer to a real project.

Structure: The core is a ConceptScheme that contains Concept resources. Each Concept has preferred labels (skos:prefLabel) in multiple languages, alternative labels (skos:altLabel), and notes (skos:scopeNote, skos:definition). Relationships are expressed with skos:broader, skos:narrower, and skos:related, with transitive forms such as skos:broaderTransitive and skos:narrowerTransitive. SKOS-XL can be used for extended lexical representations when terms require complex labeling.

Mapping and alignment: Concepts may be linked to external schemes using skos:exactMatch, skos:closeMatch, skos:broadMatch, and skos:narrowMatch, enabling cross-walks and data integration.

Governance and metadata: SKOSia emphasizes provenance, licensing, versioning, and stewardship. Each ConceptScheme carries metadata about authorship, rights, and revisions, and changes are tracked through a revision history and changelogs.

Implementation and use: SKOSia supports exports in RDF serializations such as Turtle or RDF/XML, and can provide JSON-LD contexts for web applications. SPARQL endpoints may be offered for querying concepts and relations.

Use cases and status: The article presents SKOSia as a fictional illustration for education and research in knowledge organization. It is not associated with a formal standards body or active governance.

Example concept: Education (prefLabel: Education in English, Éducation in French, Bildung in German) with a broader concept Knowledge, and notes describing scope and synonyms.