Thesauri are valuable knowledge organization systems (KOSs) that support advanced information retrieval. The Semantic Web has brought a renewed interest in thesauri as a support for semantic searches and other added-value services. Tools that manage thesauri permit them to be created, edited and queried. The integrity restrictions on thesauri should also be controlled by these tools. However, there is also the possibility of thesaurus exchange, which becomes relevant in the Semantic Web context, where information exchange is a crucial facility. In fact, interoperability at the information level has received an important boost with the stabilization of the SKOS standard as a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation. Furthermore, the feasibility of integrating software is a valuable feature for software developers. An evaluation framework for thesaurus tools is proposed, which includes the issues of functionalities, construct support, integrity, information interoperability and feasibility of integrating software. It is original in focusing on Semantic Web conformity and interoperability.

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Capture-mark-recapture (CMR) approaches are often used in the management and conservation of wildlife species and effective approaches to estimate populations rely on accurate datacollection techniques. Unfortunately, sampling errors can arise at several steps in the CMR process. We designed and applied a mobile application (app) for field-collected data from a CMR study on herpetofauna. Entering data into a digital format in the field using the mobile application eliminated timely steps to process handwritten data sheets and double-checking data entries. Applications were developed for mobile devices on the iOS and Android operating systems. Both platforms have similar user interactions via data entry on a touch screen using pre-programmed fields, checkboxes, drop-down menus, and keypad entry. Our mobile application includes features to insure collection of all measurements in the field through pop-up messages and can proof entries for valid formats. The application can assign unique numbers to newly captured individuals by querying the database for unused codes and eliminates the potential to assign 2 individuals with the same unique code. Technicians can query a database to view histories of previously captured animals from the field. During a 2-month project, we estimated that using the mobile application instead of manual data entry and proofing via data sheets reduced our total project time by 10%. To our knowledge, this is the first application developed for mobile devices for biologists using CMR techniques and could be developed for use in other areas of field data collection. Ó 2013 The Wildlife Society.

Thesauri are conceptual tools useful to achieve semantic interoperability and reusability, which are relevant goals in the Semantic Web. Thesaurus standards establish, among other issues, the constructs that can appear in a thesaurus. The ISO 25964 standard for thesauri, which supersedes ISO 2788, is the evolution of the ISO thesauri standard to a conceptual approach closer to the Semantic Web. However, it appeared when SKOSthe W3C Recommendation-was already consolidated as the standard for KOS (Knowledge Organization System) representation in the Semantic Web, including thesauri. The evolution from ISO 2788 to ISO 25964, and the relationships between constructs in ISO 2788/ISO 25964 and SKOS, are studied in this paper. From the analysis of this comparison, a methodological framework, that focuses on the construct support, is proposed to evaluate the conformance quality of thesaurus management tools. Target readers are professionals in charge of thesauri edition. A Semantic Web perspective is taken to characterize the effect that using SKOS to represent thesauri can have on the results of the assessment. A proof of concept for the model's feasibility was performed on two tools and the analysis of the results of this experimental validation is presented. The conclusions highlight the model's suitability for assessing conformance to the standards concerning support for thesaurus constructs.

With the Semantic Web, thesauri regain a relevant role supporting semantic searches and other added-value services. Thesaurus standards define the constructs a thesaurus can have and the integrity rules it must comply with. Thesaurus editors can be helped in their work if thesaurus tools offer them support for integrity, warning when integrity rules are violated and/or helping them to correct these mistakes. The most recent thesaurus standard is ISO 25964, which supersedes ISO 2788, evolving towards concept-based thesauri and better aligned with the Semantic Web approach than the term-based thesauri of ISO 2788. However, the W3C recommendation for Knowledge Organisation System (KOS) representation in the semantic web context is Simple Knowledge Organisation Systems (SKOS), which is in fact prior to ISO 25964. This article focuses on thesaurus integrity and the evolution from ISO 2788 to ISO 25964. Its effect on integrity issues is analysed. A methodological proposal for evaluating integrity support in thesaurus tools, arising from the results of this work, is presented. Its target audience is professionals in charge of thesaurus editing. Besides being adapted to the most recent thesaurus standard, ISO 25964, it also includes the comparison of ISO standards with SKOS. The article concludes with the presentation of the results obtained by applying the framework to three thesaurus tools.