|
Criticism: The terminology of topic maps seems quite idiosyncratic. We
shall here compare TM terminology with what is considered usual terminology:
Subjects: The topic map standard defines
subject, the term used for the real world “thing” that
the topic itself stands in for. In ordinary terminology we would say that what
are called "subjects" are the referents of concepts.
(Cf.,
Reference). IN LIS terminology subjects (that are identified by subject
analysis) is given a different meaning than the one used in TM(cf.,
subject).
Topics: "A topic, in its
most generic sense, can be any “thing” whatsoever – a person, an entity, a
concept, really anything – regardless of whether it
exists or has any other specific characteristics, about which anything
whatsoever may be asserted by any means whatsoever." "Strictly speaking, the
term “topic” refers to the element in the topic map document (the
topic link) that represents the subject
being referred to." (Pepper
(2002). As already
mentioned under subjects, normal terminology would say that what in TM are
called "topics" should rather be termed "concepts".
The words topic and topicality is given different meanings in LIS (cf.,
topic).
Topic names: In usual terminology this are the
symbols (or the kind of symbols called words) used to designate a concept.
Topic types:
The topic map terminology says: "This corresponds to the categorization inherent
in the use of multiple indexes in a book (index of names, index of works, index
of places, etc.)". In ordinary terminology this correspond to categories,
fundamental kinds of concepts.
Occurrences. In TM terminology is a given document
is seen as an occurrence of a topic. In indexing theory what "occurs" is
information about a given concept. We may say that a book is about psychology,
meaning that it contains information about the concept "psychology", that it is
an information resource for that concept. (An index term may refer to a document
(or to a passage in a document) in order to help users identifying information).
Occurrence roles:
Pepper (2002) writes: "Occurrences, as we have already seen, may be of any number of different
types (we gave the examples of “monograph”, “article”, “illustration”,
“mention” and “commentary” above). Such distinctions are supported in
the standard by the concepts of occurrence role
and occurrence role type."
In ordinary LIS terminology are this termed document types (or
elements/parts of documents).
Topic associations: Pepper writes: "A
topic association is (formally) a link element that asserts a relationship
between two or more topics. Examples might be as follows:
- “Tosca was
written by Puccini”
- “Tosca
takes place in Rome”
- “Puccini was
born in Lucca”
- “Lucca is
in Italy”
-
“Puccini was
influenced by Verdi” " (Pepper, 2002).
In ordinary terminology what are called "topic
associations" are kinds of semantic relations (or meaning relations between
concepts). Pepper seems to recognize this when writing: "the semantics of a
topic having a type (for example, of Tosca being an opera) could equally well be
expressed through an association (of type “type-instance”) between the topic
“opera” and the topic “Tosca”. The reason for having a special construct for
this kind of association is the same as the reason for having special constructs
for certain kinds of names (indeed, for having a special construct for names at
all): The semantics are so general and universal that it is useful to
standardize them in order to maximize interoperability between systems that
support topic maps."
"Independent topic associations"
versus "anchors within the information resources":
"It is also important
to note that while both topic associations and normal cross references
are hyperlinks, they are very different creatures: In a cross reference,
the anchors (or end points) of the hyperlink occur
within the information resources (although the link itself might
be outside them); with topic associations, we are talking about links
(between topics) that are completely independent
of whatever information resources may or may not exist or be considered
as occurrences of those topics." (Pepper, 2002).
This correspond to the
distinction from indexing theory known as
assigned versus derived indexing.
In assigned indexing are terms from a controlled vocabulary assigned to
a document representation, in derived indexing are terms within the
document representations (information resources) used as entry points.
Facet: Pepper
(2002):
"A facet is
simply a property; its values are called facet values.
Facets are typically used for supplying the kind of metadata that might
otherwise have been provided by SGML or XML attributes, or by a document
management system. This could include properties such
as “language”, “security”, “applicability”, “user level”,
“online/offline”, etc." (Pepper, 2002).
This use of the term "facet" is in strong conflict with the way this
term is understood in LIS (cf.,
Facet and facet analysis). The term property should be
preferred.
Theme. Theme is defined
as “a member of the set of topics used to specify a scope”. In other
words, a theme is a topic that is used to limit the validity of a set of
assignments. Thus, the name “tosca” might be assigned to three different
topics in scopes defined by the themes “opera”, “opera”+“character”, and
“baking” respectively, thereby removing any ambiguity and reducing the
chance of errors, for example when merging topic maps."
(Pepper, 2002).
This definition is circular in that scope is defined by themes and
themes are used to define scope. This definition of theme do not match
the way it is ordinarily understood (see:
theme).
Scope. Scope is
circularly defined
in terms of themes (see above). A better
definition of scope comes from Wikipedia (2006): "In
computer programming in general, a scope is an enclosing context.
Scopes have contents which are associated with them. Various programming
languages have various types of scopes. The type of scope determines
what kind of entities it can contain and how it affects them. Depending
on its type, a scope can: * contain declarations or definitions of
identifiers;* "
|