ISKO UK Meetups

A Survey on Knowledge Organization Systems of Research Fields: Resources and Challenges

by Dr Angelo Salatino from the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs), such as term lists, thesauri, taxonomies, and ontologies, play a fundamental role in categorising, managing, and retrieving information. In the academic domain, KOSs are often adopted for representing research areas and their relationships, primarily aiming to classify research articles, academic courses, patents, books, scientific venues, domain experts, grants, software, experiment materials, and several other relevant products and agents. These structured representations of research areas, widely embraced by many academic fields, have proven effective in empowering AI-based systems to i) enhance the retrievability of relevant documents, ii) enable advanced analytic solutions to quantify the impact of academic research, and iii) analyse and forecast research dynamics. This paper aims to present a comprehensive survey of the current KOS for academic disciplines. We analysed and compared 45 KOSs according to five main dimensions: scope, structure, curation, usage, and links to other KOSs. Our results reveal a very heterogeneous scenario in terms of scope, scale, quality, and usage, highlighting the need for more integrated solutions for representing research knowledge across academic fields. We conclude by discussing the main challenges and the most promising future directions.

Semantic Web for BIM Based Construction Management

by Asha Palihakkara from the University of Nottingham and Bonnie Bowes from Squirro

In our first Meetup of 2025, Asha Palihakkara from the University of Nottingham will talk about her research into application of semantic web technologies and ontologies in Building Information Modelling (BIM) environment and the International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ICCCBE) that was held in Montreal in 2024. Bonnie Bowes from Squirro will share case studies of knowledge graph use in the construction industry.

Introducing Jekyll RDF

by Natanael Arndt from the German National Library

We'll introduce Jekyll RDF, a plugin for the open-source static website generator Jekyll. It allows the use of RDF data, such as SKOS Taxonomies and OWL Ontologies, in the static websites generated with Jekyll. If you are looking for a fast, lightweight and open-source taxonomy publication system, this event may be for you.

What's New in Skosmos 3

by Osma Suominen from the National Library of Finland

Skosmos is an open-source, web-based tool for browsing and publishing SKOS controlled vocabularies, facilitating indexing, information retrieval, and vocabulary development. It is being developed by the National Library of Finland, which uses it to power the Finto.fi vocabulary and ontology publishing service. Many other institutions worldwide use Skosmos for publishing their own controlled vocabularies.

The upcoming major release, Skosmos 3, focuses on reimplementing the user interface with modern frameworks, featuring a new visual design, enhanced accessibility, and comprehensive automated testing. This presentation will demonstrate the current status of Skosmos 3, discuss its impact on Skosmos deployments and end users, and outline the roadmap for future steps.

Documents, Databases, Knowledge Graphs, LLMs and Their Common Roots in Natural Language

by John O'Gorman from Semantium

"Stepping back" is a common technique when new ideas threaten to overwhelm old thinking. The current excitement, and sometimes anxiety, around AI is akin to the kind of chaotic synergies that took place when electricity first came into common use. People fear for their jobs, make mistakes that cause injury, while at the same time marvel at the "new magic".

FINRA's Machine-Readable Rulebook Initiative

by Afshin Atabaki, Alex Khachaturian and Nick Vitalo from FINRA

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) staff will provide a demonstration of their machine-readable rulebook initiative. As part of this initiative, FINRA developed a taxonomy - a method of classifying and categorizing a hierarchy of key terms and concepts - that was applied or "tagged" to the 40 most frequently viewed FINRA rules. The taxonomy allows users to apply an enhanced search feature to find specific content by starting with a broad topic and then narrowing down to more specific topics through sub-categories and combinations of multiple terms. Based on the taxonomy, FINRA created a prototype of a rulebook search tool - the FINRA Rulebook Search Tool™ (FIRST™). FIRST is a taxonomy-based rulebook search tool designed by FINRA to make the FINRA rulebook more accessible when searching for relevant information or developing automated compliance functions. FIRST is enabled by a regulatory taxonomy applied, or "tagged," to a series of FINRA rules.

The taxonomy enhances the FINRA rulebook by allowing users to narrow down the universe of potentially applicable rules through sophisticated search filters. In addition, the FINRA Application Programming Interface (API) Platform provides a rulebook API that enables users to receive rule content, including the taxonomy terms tagged to each of the 40 rules. These may be mapped to internal compliance systems and can facilitate the development of automated compliance tools.

Our hope is that attendees will understand how FINRA's machine-readable rulebook initiative can help enhance firms' compliance efforts, reduce costs, and aid in risk management.

For more information, attendees may read the Special Notice: FINRA Requests Comment on Its Machine-Readable Rulebook Initiative.

Event details and bios...

by Marianne Lykke from Aalborg University

Starting with what we know about information behaviour and information practices in business environments, Prof Marianne Lykke will discuss what it means for Knowledge Organisation, specifically for the use of metadata and Knowledge Organisation Systems and the role they play in information systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies.

Video and event details...

Information Governance

by Noeleen Schenk

Information Governance is a crucial aspect of managing information in organisations, and in this meetup, we'll examine what it is, why organisations are adopting it, some common overarching processes and how it relates to knowledge organisation. We'll also delve into how organisations partition the domain, including whether security, privacy, and quality are included and if there are any regulations that drive this partitioning. Additionally, we'll discuss case studies to understand what good information governance looks like. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from Noeleen Schenk and understand the impact of Information Governance on organisations!

Video and event details...

How Can a Knowledge Audit Contribute to Knowledge Management Planning

by Patrick Lambe and Janine Weightman

A knowledge audit provides an "at a glance" view of an organization's needs and opportunities. Its purpose is to improve an organization's effectiveness through a better understanding of the dynamics and levers of knowledge production, access, and use. However, there is a lot of inconsistency in how knowledge audits are conducted, which sometimes undermines the credibility and usefulness of the exercise.

Patrick Lambe will introduce a systematic approach to knowledge auditing and will talk about the inspiration behind his newly published book "Principles of Knowledge Auditing: Foundations for Knowledge Management Implementation", and Janine Weightman will share her practical experience conducting knowledge audits through a case study.

Video and event details...

coli-conc: Mapping Knowledge Organization Systems

by Uma Balakrishnan

coli-conc is an infrastructure that provides easy access to KOS and mappings in a uniform data format on a single platform. It also facilitates management and exchange of concordances between library knowledge organization systems. The heart of the coli-conc infrastructure is the mapping tool Cocoda which assists in the creation and processing of intellectual mappings amongst various types of KOS. The presentation will include a live demonstration of the tool, the different sources of mapping suggestions as well as the current and possible future use cases of the tool and mappings in different scenarios.

Video and event details...

One Information Management System for Compliance, Governance and Findability

by Stuart Eve and Darren Wray

In this talk, Stuart Eve and Darren Wray from SimSage will discuss meeting competing priorities with a single information management system.

Event details...

The Opportunities and Challenges in Leveraging Sustainable Finance Taxonomies

by James Phare and Daniel Burke-Ward

Suddenly in recent years, the world of sustainable finance has become transfixed with Taxonomies, which classify financial securities and activities as 'green' (sometimes even light green or dark green). With the EU Green Taxonomy leading the way, over 30 green taxonomies now exist - mainly developed by international financial regulators & standards bodies. Yet, whilst finance for a long time has worked with a variety of taxonomies, such as industrial sector classification schemes, for the vast majority of the sustainable finance community, these taxonomies remain an untapped resource, poorly understood and underutilized.

In this talk, James & Dan will share their practical experiences of working with the various sustainable finance taxonomies, the direction the space is headed in as well as touching on some of the use cases Neural Alpha are delivering utilizing taxonomies within Knowledge Graph powered Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other applications.

Video and event details...

Vocabs Editor and Taxonomy Publishing Ecosystem

by Peter Andorfer and Klaus Illmayer

In the first Meetup of 2023, Peter Andorfer and Klaus Illmayer from Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities will discuss Vocabs Editor and the taxonomy publishing ecosystem based on Skosmos.

Video and event details...

Data Discovery at Wiley

by Niké Brown

In this follow-up to ISKO UK Meetup in October about taxonomy business use cases, Niké Brown focuses on the real-world issues of taxonomy design and implementation.

Video and event details...

How Taxonomies Can Solve Complex Business Problems

by Ramona Aubry

Have you ever wondered what pain points a taxonomy can solve? In this session, we’re sharing our experience around the way in which taxonomies deliver value for organizations that struggle with content challenges. Join us to learn why taxonomies are unique in tackling the most advanced business problems when it comes to unstructured content.

 Video and event details...

How to Build a Knowledge Graph

by Paul Appleby

In this talk we cover the steps in the journey to creating a knowledge graph, from beginning to use taxonomies and ontologies through to finally delivering knowledge graphs at scale through APIs.

The best approach for many organisations is to deliver a knowledge graph incrementally to provide value as soon as possible. The learning curve can be steep and the skills are not always available. We look at how the latest tooling can help with this.

There is also the question of build versus buy (including open source) and we cover some of the pros and cons of both approaches.
The journey is not all about technology though so we also look at some of the points relating to users and patterns of working, collaboration and a few observations that we commonly see.

Video and event details...

Taxonomies for Confluence

by Eugene Morozov

Video and event details...

Why Graphs? The Limits of Hierarchical Thinking

by Bob Kasenchak

Why would a taxonomist interrogate the limitations of hierarchical thinking and information organization? Graphs offer more specific and flexible structures to model relationships between objects. This basic change of frame reflects more accurately the way humans understand information, provides flexible and extensible modelling options, and usurps existing (tree-based, or arboreal) power and information structures in favour of a decentralized, democratized information environment with no beginning and no end.

Video, slides and event details...

The Evolution of UX Strategy

by Jaime Levy

Have you ever wondered aloud, what the hell is UX Strategy? Well Jaime Levy, the author of the O’Reilly Media best-selling book UX Strategy is coming with a long ranty answer. User experience (UX) strategy lies at the intersection of UX design and business strategy. This talk delves into the evolution of the term over the last 15 years and how it has taken on new meaning. Jaime will also provide a high-level overview of the product/UX strategy techniques that make up her methodology. Please come with good cheer and questions.

Event details...

Keywording Creative Content

by Clemency Wright

This presentation explores the key methodologies and strategies employed when Keywording creative content.

We’ll see how Keywording relates to content classification and content retrieval. We’ll look at illustrated examples and learn about real-life case studies, and how organisation employ creative Keywording practices.

There is a focus on conceptual Keywording and the impact this has for today’s brands and visual communications.

This presentation introduces the practical skills required to harness conceptual keywords, optimise access to assets, and target more users with relevant content.

The key principles of Relevance, Accuracy and Consistency will be discussed alongside visual examples, to achieve the key learning outcomes.

Video, slides and event details...

Basic Steps in Creation of Structured Vocabulary

by Leonard Will

When creating a structured vocabulary, in addition to the technical and intellectual considerations about defining concepts and their relationships, there are management aspects that have to be resolved. Why do you think that a structured vocabulary is needed? What resources will it give access to? Who will use it, at the input and output stages? What kind of structure will be appropriate? What software will it use? Who will maintain it? These matters are dealt with in clause 13 of the international standard ISO 25964-1:2011, which this talk will summarise to encourage participants to answer these questions for themselves.

Video, slides and event details...

E-commerce Search is Broken - How to Fix it With Open Source Software

by Charlie Hull

The simple truth is that if you can't find it, you won't buy it - but in that case why do so many e-commerce websites fail at the basics of search, with irrelevant or even zero results for the simplest of queries? Charlie will show examples of search failures and introduce Chorus, an open source reference implementation for powerful and relevant search that can be swiftly tuned to fix common e-commerce search issues.

Event details...

The Evolving Role of Metadata

by David Haynes

David Haynes will talk about ways in which metadata’s role in the digital economy is changing. In his book "Metadata for information management and Retrieval" he talks about the six purposes of metadata. Some areas such as information retrieval are due a re-think and other areas such as information governance are becoming more critical.

Event details...

ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: Introduction to Wikibase

by Mohammed Sadat Abdulai, Georgina Burnett, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

Event details...

Coping with Complexity: Building a Knowledge Graph for UK Parliament

by Anya Somerville and Michael Smethurst

Event details...

Copyright in a Knowledge Organization Workplace

by Stephen Garfield

Event details...

On the Pre-history of Information Technology

by Stephen Robertson

Event details...

Semantic Tagging and Text Classification for Archives and Content Systems

by Chris Newell.

Many archives and content production systems suffer from a lack of comprehensive content metadata. This presentation describes work to overcome this using automated text tagging and classification tools which can be applied to text documents, video subtitles or speech-to-text transcripts.

Event details...

ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 3: VocBench Vocabulary Versioning and Data Catalogue

by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

In this last interactive workshop in the VocBench series, we'll talk about managing versions of your vocabulary. We'll provide an instance for all participants to get the first-hand experience - you'll be able to use a preloaded vocabulary to play along or bring your own.

Event details...

MS Teams – The Case for Information Architecture and Governance

Presentation by Metataxis.

This presentation seeks to address the issues and challenges organisations and information managers are facing with the introduction of MS teams, providing practical advice on how to address them, focusing on the developing a robust information architecture and governance .

Slides and event details...

ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 2: VocBench Data Import with Sheet2RDF

by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

In this second interactive workshop, we'll talk about importing existing vocabularies into VocBench. We'll use both standard format and Sheet2RDF feature. You'll be able to play along using the provided data. If you manage your vocabulary in a spreadsheet, you can bring it along, and we'll see what we can do!

Event details...

Beyond the Hero's Journey

by Paul Rissen

Drawing upon the work of screenwriting experts, critics and academics, as well as seven years of experience with narrative online, this talk will demystify the process of crafting a narrative, showing how information architecture and structured thinking can help us make sense of the stories we tell ourselves every day.

Event details...

ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 1: Introducing VocBench

by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

"Introducing VocBench" is the first workshops in which speakers will present VocBench and explain the basics. A VocBench instance will be created to provide participants with a first-hand experience. Participants will be able to use preloaded vocabulary or bring their own. An open Q&A session is arranged to give participants an opportunity to ask questions and share their experience with VocBench.

Event details...

Going Virtual with Taxonomy Boot Camp London

by Helen Lippell and Kat Allen from Taxonomy Boot Camp London

This was a very different talk from what might have been if we'd been asked in 2019. The call for papers for TBCL 2020 was sent out early last year, just as worrying news about the novel coronavirus were emerging.

Boot Camp has been running since 2016 (and its US sister event for over a decade). The last year has been unlike any other. We explained how we have adapted to changing circumstances to create an online version of our friendly and intensive conference.

Event details...

Searching Fast and Slow: Exploring Alternative Approaches to Search for Knowledge Workers

Tony Russell-Rose is Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. He is also Director of UXLabs, a research and design consultancy specialising in complex search and information access applications.

In this Meetup, Dr Tony Russell-Rose considers knowledge workers such as information professionals, legal researchers and librarians and their requirements to create and execute search strategies that are comprehensive, transparent, and reproducible.

Slides and event details...

Email and MS Teams From an Information Architecture Perspective

In this Meetup, James Lappin  has explored what strategies towards email will best enable information professionals to make a positive contribution to how messages are managed, protected and exploited as a knowledge resource.

James Lappin has spent over twenty years working in the field of archives and records management. He has provided consultancy advice for UK Parliament as well as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power. James is currently working for the European Institutions. He is also carrying out a doctoral research project into archival policy towards email in conjunction with Loughborough University and the National Archives. James is the author of the Thinking Records blog and presenter of the IRMS podcast series.

Event details...

Interactive Workshop VocBench: Getting Started, Installation Step 1

VocBench is a web-based open source application to build knowledge organisation systems using SKOS, but it needs a bit of work get it running. In this interactive workshop, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov will walk through prerequisites and the local set up of VocBench step-by-step, and develop a simple taxonomy using Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS). A Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) provides a standard way to represent knowledge organisation systems such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies within the framework of the Semantic Web.

Event details...

Myths and Half Truths About Semantic Data Modelling

In this talk, Panos Alexopoulos, Head of Ontology at Textkernel, described certain myths and half-truths that are found in the semantic modelling world and discussed what typically happens in reality.

Event details...