Use of a Terminology service

Various of the Use Cases indicate the use of a terminology service. More ideas about how IESR might be used in conjunction with a terminology service are below. They refer to the Use Cases and their Steps by number.

Use Case 1

Step 2. Portal calls terminology service to translate natural language search term into broader term suitable for collection discovery, and then to translate this broader term into a Dewey term. [Possibly several levels of broader terms may be needed depending on granularity of collection descriptions.]

Step 6b. Portal needs to use a particular vocabulary to cross-search over discovered collections by subject. It calls terminology service to provide a term in this vocabulary corresponding to input natural language term. [Portal uses usesControlledList values to determine appropriate vocabulary.]

Use Case 3 is similar.

Use Case 2

Step 2c. Local registry wants only resources relevant to a particular subject discipline. Application finds appropriate Dewey term. It then imports only those resources that have that Dewey term into the local registry. Probably broader/narrower term decisions are also needed here.

Use Case 4 (by portal builder); and Use Case 5 (by a person)

Step 1. IESR web interface needs to provide a subject search using 'words'.

• Ensure that collection descriptions include 'word' subject terms.
• Use a terminology service to translate search terms into Dewey before search. (This would complicate web search!)

Step 1a. Portal builder does translation to Dewey, using terminology service before searching.

Use Case 7, Contribution

Possibly a terminology service would be useful here for the creation of subject terms.

27 October 2008