Concept overview and data-model

THOT Thesauri comply with the ISO standard 25964-1 relating to thesauri development, and are implemented in Simple Knowledge Organizational System (SKOS). Identified and accessible through Unique Resource Identifiers (URIs), each Thot concept is defined within a skos:Concept element and is characterized by:

• Preferred terms (skos:prefLabel) in English, French, German and Arabic; as a complementary piece of information, it will also be provided a preferred term for use of concepts as xml attribute values, as those must comply with XML specific requirements in terms of naming (space and special characters not allowed, etc.).
• Alternative terms for each concepts, when necessary (skos:altLabel). Including non-preferred terms in the four languages will enhance information retrieval.
• A scope note (skos:scopeNote), providing a clear and distinctive definition of the concept.
• Reference(s) to broader and/or narrower term(s) (skos:broader and skos:narrower), if applicable, providing the concept’s context. It is worth noting that Thot Thesauri will be poly-hierarchical, which means that a concept might appear in several places in a thesaurus tree.
• Reference(s) to related concepts (skos:related), i.e. concepts that can be associated to another on a semantic ground other than hierarchical one.
• A scheme note (based on various element from skos:schemeNote), which is intended to provide information about the sources used and the collaborators involved in the collection of terms.
• Mapping with other thesauri (skos:exactMatch), such as MET, Europeana Eagle Project (see Roadmap, below)
• One or several date ranges (time:temporalEntity), if applicable (e.g. pharaohs' reigns). This is a project specific piece of information that is not suggested by the ISO Standard, but required so that the full temporal dimension of the text production involved in the digital text corpora can be taken into account.

Hierarchical structure and facets.

Concepts are bound together through Narrower and Broader Term relationships and form a hierarchical network, which is the basis for the left-hand browsing tree menu.

Facet analysis (skos:Collection and skos:OrderedCollection) is also implemented and is marked by the use of '<' and '>' signs around the facet label: e.g., '<Scripts by types>'.

The rule is that concepts are arranged in alphabetical order, according to the language in use (language switching is possible through the icons above the left-hand menu). For some sets of concepts, such as those related to chronology, logical order can be preferrable and thus prevail over alphabetical one (e.g. concepts under Pharaonic period). Please note that concepts with children (i.e. 'narrower terms') organised in logical order are considered as skos:Concept in their own right, although a full skos approach would require to see them as skos:orderedCollection.