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• Research Observatory: ISO 25964 Parts 1 and 2 – The Process and the Progress, Status, and Outcomes

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

  ISO 25964 Parts 1 and 2 – The Process and the Progress, Status, and Outcomes

  Marjorie Hlava, Access Innovations, USA  

  Support for search and tagging using controlled vocabularies has been the main focus of the ISO 25964 standard, Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies, but this support has recently been complicated by the rise of ChatGPT and Generative AI.  The changes in the information access and distribution as well as the usage options expansion with recent applications in daily life automation clearly impact the expanded use cases. Updating the standard to the situation we face today and expect to face in the next 5 years has prompted a massive rewriting of the standard to bring it in line with today’s needs. 
  
  Specifically, as the convener, she will cover the actions of the Working Group for ISO/TC 46/SC 9/WG 8 Information and documentation, during the revision of ISO 25964 (Thesauri and Interoperability with other knowledge organization systems). ISO 25964 Part 1: Thesauri for Information Retrieval, creation, management, and use, which just completed its two years revision and released recently. Then move on to on-going revision of Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies which covers interoperability between different thesauri and with other types of knowledge organization systems (KOS).

  
  

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• Research Observatory: ISO 25964 - Interoperability in the Context of Vocabulary Mapping and Interchange

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

  ISO 25964 Parts 2 – Interoperability in the Context of Vocabulary Mapping and Interchange

  Joseph Busch, Taxonomy Strategies, USA

  ISO 25964 Part 2 covers interoperability between different thesauri and with other types of structured vocabulary. It is essentially a primer on how to map concepts. This talk discusses interoperability in the context of vocabulary mapping and interchange. Vocabulary mapping has always been an opportunity to facilitate more comprehensive and exhaustive information retrieval before the Internet, for Web search, and most recently for large language model (LLM) AI. There are parallels between Web search adoption and the effective use of LLMs. The approaches to integrating knowledge organization systems (KOS) into LLM prompts are the same as for integrating KOS in information retrieval applications.

  This talk lays out the history of the quest for an RDF interchange format for networked KOS and alignment of ISO 25964 with the W3C Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) recommendations. The first Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) workshop was organized as part of the second ACM Conference oi.e. n Digital Libraries held in Philadelphia, PA in 1997. SKOS was developed as an RDF thesaurus interchange format beginning in 1997. It was published as a W3C recommendation in 2009. These two initiatives were not just parallel, they were inter-related.

  Today, obtaining a common vocabulary remains a primary challenge in building modern data and information management applications. LLMs do not make the vocabulary problem go away. The new AI is burdened with the weight of ambiguity reflected in the un-curated collection that includes everything and anything. The challenge is how language tools like taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, and even simple lists of synonyms can be incorporated into the content processing workflows to support more effective AI prompting and machine interpretation, so they can be activated as language processing agents to clarify, refine, and define the meaning of content and user intent.

  
  

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• Research Observatory: Evolving Artificial Intelligence Standards

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

  Evolving Artificial Intelligence Standards

  Marcia Zeng, Kent State University, USA

  The talk provides an overview of the several standards by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 Artificial Intelligence, with special attention to those under development and those addressing Data Quality for Analytics and Machine Learning (ML). Dr Zeng introduces several recent significant ISO and W3C standardization efforts that address responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Additionally, the follow-up panel will discuss several recent significant standardization efforts that address responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems by ISO and other organizations. All will be critical for the important knowledge organization research, practice, contributions and concerns for the world, in the age of AI.

  
  

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