PoolParty in Detail
Navigation and Interface
In addition to the main editing program, as mentioned in the overview, this thesaurus can be accessed and edited collaboratively (depending on permissions) from inside a browser window, via the ‘wiki’ tab (Nagy, 2012b). The main screen is divided into three parts, the tool bar, hierarchy tree and the term details. There is a wiki-style front end available for collaborative browsing.
Editing
Vocabulary terms to be edited can be found using the search function, which auto completes search terms that the user then chooses from a list. There is a automatic tag-recommender function that adds and extra layer of metadata and contributes to the tag-cloud generation product that is available as an add-on.
New relationships can be added to terms by clicking on an icon, right clicking and choosing the desired action, or by dragging and dropping terms and their children. When semantic relationships are being created, the auto complete function ensures that the terms being linked are not new terms and are those already available. The screen shot below is an example of a narrower concept being chosen from a list of auto completed terms.
Figure 1. Auto completion in action.
(Nagy, 2012b)
Building Relationships
The standard semantic relationships are supported and can be edited by right clicking, using the icon or dragging and dropping. Concepts that are synonymous can be merged into one hierarchy by dragging and dropping, a simple functionality that appears as a more complicated system of steps in other thesauri, including MultiTes.
Taxonomy Display
Two main taxonomy display options are available as the user can toggle between the hierarchicy tree and alphabetical taxonomy representation. A third, ‘details’ view gives more detailed information for the whole project or the single concept. User defined notes are available in three formats; change notes, editorial notes and history notes. These are displayed when viewing the term’s metadata.
Importing, Exporting and Reports
Terms can be manually entered by the user or imported in the standard XML, or free-text formats. The thesaurus can be auto-populated with terms from Dbpedia, which is an open-source database of structured data extracted from Wikipedia articles (Nagy, 2012a). This ontology is very broad, and mostly consists of top-level terms, it is also known as the ‘linked-data cloud’ (Coyle, 2012, p. 28) and the company claims usage of this data will “generate richer knowledge models around specific domains” (Nagy, 2012b). Information architects should note that the accuracy and relevancy of this input would need to be carefully vetted before application in front end search systems. Vocabularies can be exported in the standard XML, HTML or txt fashion.
Software and Support/strong>
This thesaurus provides equivalency support for bi and multilingual taxonomies. There is a PoolParty suite Wiki, a quick-start guide, and an image rich tutorial guide for the basic processes such as adding a new term, importing a vocabulary and creating hierarchical and equivalence relationships.
As this is a commercial package for large enterprises, there is a hierarchy of user restrictions and permissions. Access to certain elements of the software are restricted by the ‘superadministrator’ (Nagy, 2012b). Thus staff working on one element of a website design project, may not have access to certain tools. These restrictions would have to be carefully considered by the information architect, as access to the advanced editing functions may be a priority at certain stages of the design process.
Although the PoolParty suite does not claim to align with International Thesauri Standards, such as ISO 5964 (Guidelines for the establishment and development of multilingual thesauri), researchers suggest that the SKOS community is considering extensions for better alignment with this standard which will aid interoperability between differen systems (Clarke, 2010, p. 45).
References
Clarke, S. D. (2010). Thesaurus standards on a converging track. Legal Information Management, 10(1), 43-45.
Coyle, K. (2012). Vocabularies, term lists and thesauri. Linked Data Tools: Connecting on the Web (Vol. May/June).
Nagy, H. (2012a). PoolParty Thesaurus Manager (PPT) 3.1.0 released. Retrieved Sep 12, 2012, from http://poolparty.biz/poolparty-thesaurus-manager-ppt-3-1-0-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=poolparty-thesaurus-manager-ppt-3-1-0-released
Nagy, H. (2012b). PoolParty Thesaurus Manager documentation. Retrieved from https://grips.semantic-web.at/display/public/POOLDOKU/PoolParty+-+Documentation