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• Research Observatory: Knowledge Graphs enabling FAIR research infrastructures

  • When
    24 Jun 2026
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom (London, UK)

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  Knowledge Graphs enabling FAIR research infrastructures
  by Ronald Siebes

  The presentation opens with a brief overview of Semantic Web technology and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. To illustrate the application, Ronald dives into various Dutch funded projects where  Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are an enabling component to achiever FAIR research infrastructures for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

  KGs, in this case, contain metadata formulated in standardized schemas and vocabularies about datasets, workflows, software and tools, access policies and licenses, publications, variables etc. The challenge is not so much from a technical perspective, but from a social perspective: which vocabularies are the best candidates for a consensus on meaning for concepts in the various SSH domains? What are the Middle Ages? What are the geo coordinates for the bounding box of the "Lambeth" district in 1768? What does "around 18th century" mean?

  Other challenges will be discussed: How can we annotate restricted data? How to annotate software so we can deploy it automatically in a Virtual Research Environment?

  
  

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• Research Observatory: Building Trustworthy AI with Semantic Croissant and CDIF framework

  • When
    20 Jul 2026
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom (London, UK)

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  Building Trustworthy AI with Semantic Croissant and CDIF framework
  by Slava Tykhonov & Simon Hodson 

  Semantic Croissant is an AI-ready research data infrastructure designed to connect distributed data sources such as research archives, statistical repositories, government databases, and international collections. It combines multiple data layers built on machine-readable metadata, ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and policy frameworks. Instead of centralizing data, it creates a federated knowledge network in which data remains with its original providers while becoming more interoperable and easier to use, with using Croissant for Machine Learning specification as navigation layer. The semantic layer of the system is the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF), which ensures consistent semantic alignment, standardized data exchange, and interoperability across domains.

  
  

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• ISKO UK Meetup - How do Knowledge Organization Systems work with AI?

  • When
    15 Sep 2026
  •  
    12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  by Marjorie Hlava from Access Innovations

  Some people have said that taxonomies are dead - no longer needed int he Age of AI. The reality is that they are needed more than ever. This presentation explains their role in the systems and outlines the strategy for adding Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) to the “chunks” needed to create a AI implementation. In order to build a Vector Database, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) or Model Content Platform (MCP) content needs to be chunked into small parcels of text which are then tokenized. What role do subject metadata from a KOS and provenance play in this process? How does that process work? What needs to be done to the data? Can it be done automatically? What resources are available now to insure data retains its history and intellectual property is protected for recognition and inclusion?

  This talk takes the listener through the steps and the technology behind the scenes to get data ready for LLM ingestion and use in conversational search responses.

  Marjorie Hlava is President and Chairman of Access Innovations, Inc., an international database construction and information management services company she founded in 1978. She was educated as a botanist, trained by NASA as an information engineer, and has worked behind the scenes for most of the major information organizations. Her research interests center on speeding the human processes in knowledge management through productivity enhancements, working methodologies and software for the automation assistance of the human brain in organizing information. She has been active in pushing semantic enrichment and adaptation of artificial intelligence techniques wherever they allow consistently reproducible results. Marjorie is the creator of the patented Data Harmony software suite for the automation of indexing process that includes metadata management module to manage thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies. Marjorie authored numerous books and over 200 articles on the topic of information organization, semantic enrichment, taxonomy and thesaurus construction. A relevant publication, The Taxobook, is a three-volume collection on information concepts, search and retrieval and the construction and implementation of taxonomies.

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