The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today unveiled a new framework designed to bridge the gap between classifications, subject headings and taxonomies and so-called linked data.

The idea is to create broader and simpler data exchange and access to information as part of the broader Semantic Web (define) initiative.

The term "linked data" describes a method of exposing and connecting data on the Web from different sources using URIs (define) (Uniform Resource Identifiers). URI is the generic term for names and addresses on the Web, including Web page URLs.

The W3C, an international standards organization, said the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) should be of interest to a broad spectrum of organizations including enterprises, libraries, museums and newspapers. It also said the spec is applicable to applications like government portals, social networking tools and other communities that manage large collections of data.

Because SKOS is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) (define), these representations are machine-readable and can be exchanged between software applications and published on the World Wide Web.

"This is part of the 'Webification' of knowledge organization systems," W3C spokesman Ian Jacobs told InternetNews.com. "SKOS is flexible enough to handle many flavors of knowledge systems, which means organizations can start bringing their collections to the Web."

Jacobs said SKOS had a "wonderful kickstart" thanks to its adoption by the Library of Congress (LOC), which has used it in a set of subject headings for categorizing books, videos, and other library resources. You can go to the LOC Web site to try out different subject headings.

For example, a search for "Chinese Literature" brings up a relevant list of categories starting with "Chinese literature (English)", "Chinese literature (20th Century)", and so on.

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"What you are seeing is a search engine built on top of the SKOS data that lets you link to other categories and drill down or pull back on the data, depending on what you need," Jacobs said.

As the LOC and other organizations expand their use of SKOS, the categories will be available for others to reuse as a standard way to describe the different sets of information.

"The availability of the URIs means the information isn't locked behind a database wall," Jacobs said. "The Library of Congress has done all the work over decades figuring out these different categories, so now you don't have to."

The W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the U.S., the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, and Keio University in Japan, and has seventeen outreach offices worldwide.