Heather Hedden, a taxonomist, and author of the book The Accidental Taxonomist shares her thoughts on knowledge models and knowledge modeling. Knowledge modeling is often referred to as semantic models where the designation of “model” is what is used for RDF, SKOS, and OWL-based systems.
A knowledge model is similar to a knowledge organization system in many ways. It comprises concepts, their labels, attributes, and relationships, along with policies and rules. A knowledge model can be considered as a more complex knowledge organization system such as a thesaurus or ontology. It could be a set of multiple controlled vocabularies used in combination with the same set of content that forms a set of taxonomies like facets.
The task of creating a knowledge model is more complex than developing a taxonomy and requires slightly different thinking. For example, in knowledge modeling, the emphasis is more on gathering stakeholder/user input in a comprehensive and systematic way. Furthermore, a taxonomist or knowledge modeler should think of what are the possible classes, facets, or concept schemes to describe a domain. They should equally consider the various user activities and use cases that need to be supported and to create specific concepts.
Knowledge modeling involves describing a domain through concepts, classes of concepts, and customized semantic relationships between concepts of different classes. These are the same activities involved in designing and creating ontologies, which are knowledge organization systems. Furthermore, designing knowledge organization systems, which are not ontologies, involve knowledge modeling activities. In addition, determining what additional semantic relationships are desired, how specific they should be, and what they should be named in either direction represent very much a knowledge-modeling task.
Knowledge modeling is not just information management, it is a knowledge management activity and is more challenging than taxonomy creation.
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