[topicmapmail] Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus On Line

[Thomas B. Passin]

If you do not know about this gem, I suggest checking it out.  The Getty
Museum folks have developed an extensive classification system that is a
hybrid of hierarchical and faceted classification.  It seems really
carefully worked out.  The fascinating part is that they seem to have
invented essentially the topic map model (or maybe they have adapted it, I
do not know).  Let me quote from the page -

" The focus of each AAT record is a concept. In the database, each concept
(or record) is identified by a unique numeric ID. Linked to each concept are
terms, related concepts, a parent (that is, a position in the hierarchy),
sources for the data, and notes. Terms for any concept can include the
plural form of the term, singular form, natural order, inverted order,
spelling variants, various forms of speech, and synonyms that have various
etymological roots. "

"... concepts may have Associative Relationships, which are various types of
ties or connections between concepts, excluding hierarchical genus/species
relationships. "

http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/about.html#scope

One very interesting feature is that they distinguish a hierarchy - for
which they have the equivalent of instanceOf - from the non-hierarchical
relationships.  They laso have multiple instanceOfs.  This suggests to me
that there is some rationale for considering instanceOf as being something a
bit different from just another association.

Anyway, check it out and see what you think.

Cheers,

Tom P