[Sigia-l] Distributed thesaurus?

[Travis Wilson]

Gang,

An interesting discussion on the XFML mailing list (xfml.org) has got me to 
the point where I want a single distributed thesaurus to exist on the net. 
You know how each institution has its own controlled vocabulary of terms, 
which is a self-contained graph of terms and their relationships? I want a 
standard syntax by which I can link my terms to terms in other people's 
thesauri. Those links would comply with conventional thesaurus 
relationships (RT/BT/NT/etc), so the end result would be one huge 
distributed vocabulary.

(To stave off one possible question, there would be no "master node". 
Thesauri are generalized nondirectional graphs which, thank god, fight 
against notions of single-parent hierarchy. A "master node" would make as 
much sense as a "master site" for the web.)

For example, there was a project at CERES a few years ago, the overwhelming 
destination of a google on 'distributed thesaurus'. The deliverable was a 
global thesaurus of bio terms, but its broad technological goal was just 
what I want, interoperability between thesauri. It had loftier goals I 
don't even need, such as a client-server protocol to query external 
thesauri. Has there been any progress on this since 1999, and does anyone 
use it?

XFML is the most promising recent development effort I've seen in this 
area, but I wonder if anyone has seen another that might be a potential 
standard. I'm looking at Karl while I ask this, but of course it's an open 
question.

Travis Wilson
Development
http://facetmap.com