ISO/DIS 25964-1 (compare our news item at [1]) has recently been released by ISO TC46/SC 9, as a draft available for public comment, in English language only. It is available from ISO as pdf (5 MB) or paper version, both at a cost of 98 CHF [2].

Information and documentation. Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies, Part 1:
Thesauri for information retrieval
Revises: ISO 2788:1986. Revises: ISO 5964:1985
134 pages

From now on until 26 March 2010, the ISO balloting process will take place, inviting comments and voting through the national standards bodies.
The publication, commenting and balloting procedure is, however, different in every country.

UK
In the UK, the DIS will be available for anyone to purchase from BSI at 20 pounds. This may sound like a high price, but it is much less than the price at ISO or the one applied when the standard eventually is approved. BSI will soon also provide a tool for viewing the draft online and submitting comments, whether or not you live in the UK [3]. The BSI national committee will review all of the comments received before formulating a UK response to the DIS.

In some other countries, the DIS might only be submitted to the national TC 46/SC9 committee for comments and voting. For details, you will have to ask your national standards body.

Germany
Please find below the details regarding Germany, in German, received by DIN NABD:

Der Text wird den 21 Mitarbeitern des NABD 9 zugaenglich gemacht und nur die koennen direkt kommentieren bzw. am Balloting teilnehmen. Die Livelink Notification E-Mail zum Balloting, mit kostenlosem Zugang zum Text des DIS, wird zeitnah an die Mitarbeiter des NABD 9 versendet. Die Geschäftsstelle des NABD organisiert das deutsche Balloting über das Livelink System. Von dort erfolgt die Weitergabe des konsolidierten Ergebnisses an die ISO.

Wenn deutschen Kollegen Mitarbeiter der NABD bekannt sind, koennen sie Kommentare an diese Personen geben.
Kommentare, die als Blog Comments hier im TWR-Blog abgegeben oder mir als Email (traugott.koch@mpdl.mpg.de) zugeschickt werden, koennen von mir als Teil meiner konsolidierten Stellungnahme an die Geschaeftsstelle des NABD weitergereicht werden.

[1] http://metadaten-twr.org/2009/05/27/new-iso-thesaurus-standard-under-development/

[2] http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=53657

[3] http://drafts.bsigroup.com/

In 2005, IFLA started “Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records (FRSAR)” as a working group in the FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) family. The group was supposed to focus on subject authority data (information about subjects from authority files) and its use in a wide range of applications, the semantics, structures and interoperability issues of such data, independent from any implementation or specific context.

In June this year, the FRSAR working group published a second draft of a “Conceptual Model” [1]. It focuses on general functional requirements and the potential of subject authority data for broad sharing and use.

This draft was open for comments and review until the end of July in order for discussions by the Working Group during the IFLA 2009 conference in mid-August in Milan. Further comments can be sent to mzeng@kent.edu.

The core of the model on the aboutness of works is the following:

work <<has as subject/is subject of>> thema <<has appellation/is appellation of>> nomen

The relationships between the three entities are many-to-many relationships and bi-directional. However, in a given controlled vocabulary and within a domain, a nomen should be an appellation of only one thema.

“Thema” is defined as “any entity that can be subject of a work”. Thema includes any of the entities which are originally defined by FRBR: work, expression, manifestation, item; person, corporate body; concept, object, event, place and all other subjects “work” might have.
The entity “Nomen” and the relationships ‘Thema has appellation Nomen/ Nomen is appellation of Thema’ are new proposals of the working group. “Nomen” is any sign or sequence of signs (alphanumeric characters, symbols etc.) by which a “Thema” is known, referred to or addressed as.

Two co-chairs of the working group, Marcia Zeng and Maja Zumer, compare the FRSAR model in a paper presented at IFLA 2009 [2] with related models (new thesauri standards BS8723 and ISO 25964-1; SKOS, OWL and the DCMI Abstract Model). They conclude that these models match rather well with the FRASAR conceptual model, and thus, that subject authority data that are modeled according to FRSAD and encoded in SKOS or OWL will have a high potential of interoperability and contribute to linked data and the semantic web.

[1] IFLA (2009). Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD). A Conceptual Model. IFLA Working Group on FRSAR. 2nd draft 2009-06-10.http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/FRSAR/report090623.pdf

[2] Zeng, Marcia and Zumer, Maja (2009). Introducing FRSAD and mapping it with SKOS and other models. 75th IFLA General Conference, Papers, 23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy. Available in 5 languages.
http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/FRSAR/index.html

The heavily used ISO thesaurus standards are now about 35 years old and their last revisions took place more than twenty years ago. Since roughly a year ago, an international working group (WG 8 Structured Vocabularies) under the ISO TC46/SC9 committee “Identification and Description”, is developing a common new standard under the title “ISO 25964 Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies”.

Aim
The basic principles of how to build, maintain and use a thesaurus and, especially, the function of such a controlled vocabulary, might not have changed significantly. The technology, scale of application and especially the new context of the digital world and the Internet are radically different, however.
Modern tools are needed to access networked information resources by topic and to prepare for Semantic Web. Rather traditional Knowledge Organization tools have shown to carry considerable benefits in this new environment.

Predecessors
Prior updates to the original ISO standards (ISO 2788 monolingual thesauri and ISO 5964 multilingual thesauri) have been taking place in US and UK national standards. NISO has updated the US national standard for monolingual thesauri ANSI/NISO Z39.19 more frequently, especially with the latest version 2005 (available at [1]). Seven years of work in the UK resulted in BS 8723, published in five parts between 2005 and 2008 (print for a fee, copyright). The latter effort is the main basis for the work with the new ISO standard, again under the leadership of Stella Dextre Clarke as convenor.

New content, structure and scope
All of the existing scope of the two earlier ISO standards will be retained and revised, and the following additional subjects will be added, what to a large degree already has happened in the new British Standard:

• Function (and display) of thesauri in electronic environments
• Functional specification for software to manage thesauri
• Data model for a thesaurus
• Formats and protocols for exchange of thesaurus data
• Guidelines for certain additional types of vocabulary (e.g. classification schemes, taxonomies)

• Interoperability and mapping between vocabularies

Since thesauri still are dealt with in greatest detail and completeness, the ISO standard will be published in two separate parts:

1) Thesauri for information retrieval, covering mono- and multilingual thesauri; data model and exchange formats; everything which relates solely to thesauri

2) Interoperability with other vocabularies, covering guidelines and issues of interoperability between thesauri and single other types of structured vocabularies; advice on mapping

Timetable, Contributions
A Committee Draft (CD), in the language of ISO, of Part 1 has been delivered to SC9 on 30 November 2008. During February/March 2009, the standard bodies of the SC9 member countries voted on the Committee Draft which received 100% approval to advance to the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage. The extensive comments received will be used to consider and improve the text for the submission of a DIS version, expected in July 2009, which again will be voted on. Part 1, ISO 25964-1, is expected to be finally published and ready for use in Fall 2009. The work on Part 2 has been started during May 2009.

As widely known, drafts and texts worked on during an ISO standardisation process are not publicly available, they are confidential and under copyright constraints.

To exercise your influence, please contact experts in the responsible national committees (Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Ukraine and United States are represented in the ISO working group at this time) via the national standards bodies.
At least the DIS will be open to everybody for general comments and feedback.
Your comments and questions on this and following blog entries at this TechWatch Report site are very welcome and will be read and considered by the responsible ISO working group.

Reference
For a few further details and references, i.e. the five parts of the British standard, consult:
Dextre Clarke, Stella G. (2008). ISO 2788 + ISO 5964 + Much Energy = ISO 25964. In: ASIS&T Bulletin October/November 2008 [2]

[1] http://www.niso.org/standards/
[2] http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-08/OctNov08_DextreClarke.html