Research Observatory: ISO 25964 - Interoperability in the Context of Vocabulary Mapping and Interchange (11 Nov 2026)

Wed, 11 Nov 2026 18:30:00 GMT

ISO 25964 Parts 2 – Interoperability in the Context of Vocabulary Mapping and Interchange

Joseph Busch, Taxonomy Strategies, USA

ISO 25964 is the International Standard for Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies. Part 2 of this standard covers interoperability between different thesauri and with other types of structured vocabulary. It is essentially a primer on how to map concepts. This talk discusses interoperability in the context of vocabulary mapping and interchange. Vocabulary mapping has always been an opportunity to facilitate more comprehensive and exhaustive information retrieval before the Internet, for Web search, and most recently for large language model (LLM) AI. There are parallels between Web search adoption and the effective use of LLMs. The approaches to integrating knowledge organization systems (KOS) into LLM prompts are the same as for integrating KOS in information retrieval applications.

This talk lays out the history of the quest for an RDF interchange format for networked KOS and alignment of ISO 25964 with the W3C Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) recommendations. The first Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) workshop was organized as part of the second ACM Conference oi.e. n Digital Libraries held in Philadelphia, PA in 1997. SKOS was developed as an RDF thesaurus interchange format beginning in 1997. It was published as a W3C recommendation in 2009. These two initiatives were not just parallel, they were inter-related.

Today, obtaining a common vocabulary remains a primary challenge in building modern data and information management applications. LLMs do not make the vocabulary problem go away. The new AI is burdened with the weight of ambiguity reflected in the un-curated collection that includes everything and anything. The challenge is how language tools like taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, and even simple lists of synonyms can be incorporated into the content processing workflows to support more effective AI prompting and machine interpretation, so they can be activated as language processing agents to clarify, refine, and define the meaning of content and user intent.

Research Observatory: ISO 25964 and Evolving Artificial Intelligence Standards (25 Nov 2026)

Wed, 25 Nov 2026 18:30:00 GMT

ISO 25964 and Evolving Artificial Intelligence Standards

Marcia Zeng, Kent State University, USA

This is the third in the series of presentations related to the work on ISO 25964, the International Standard for Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies. The talk provides an overview of the several standards by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 Artificial Intelligence, with special attention to those under development and those addressing Data Quality for Analytics and Machine Learning (ML). Dr Zeng introduces several recent significant ISO and W3C standardization efforts that address responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Additionally, the presentation discusses several recent significant standardization efforts that address responsible use of AI systems by ISO and other organizations. These are considered critical for the important knowledge organization research, practice, contributions and concerns for the world, in the age of AI.

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Research Observatory: ISO 25964 - Interoperability in the Context of Vocabulary Mapping and Interchange (11 Nov 2026)

Research Observatory: ISO 25964 and Evolving Artificial Intelligence Standards (25 Nov 2026)