Page 109 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

108 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 8, 2016

as parent tables while main tables, auxiliary tables and classifications as child tables. Between
the two types of tables, there are relationships of “including” (dct:hasPart) and “being included”
(dct:isPartOf). Concepts in main tables reference categories in classifications, so relationships
between main tables and classifications are “referencing” (dct:references) and “being referenced”
(dct:referencedBy). As for thesauri with multiple editions, different editions can be regarded as
different concept schemes. Relationships between different editions are “replacing” (dct:replaces)
and “being replaced” (dct:isReplacedBy).

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EDU SFQMBDFT
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EDU IBT1BSU
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EDU JT1BSU0G EDU JT1BSU0G
"VYJMJBSZ
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EDU SFGFSFODFE#Z EDU JT1BSU0G EDU IBT1BSU
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Figure 2. Thesaurus macrostructure.

3.2 Thesaurus metadata

Thesaurus metadata is a description scheme for tables of thesauri. Thesaurus metadata is very
similar to that of a document. Therefore, it’s feasible to design a metadata scheme of NTW based
on the metadata scheme of Dublin Core (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2008), as shown in
Table 1.
In NTW system, member thesauri and their constituent parts can be described as independent
concept schemes. Their “ResourceType” (rdf:type) is “conceptScheme” (skos:conceptScheme).
According to specific demands the class “conceptScheme” may be further divided into “thesaurus”
“mainTable” “classification” “auxiliaryTable” and so on. All concept schemes on different levels
use URIs as unique identifications. Although main tables, classifications and auxiliary tables can
be described respectively, nonetheless, in most cases, they are not granted with independent table
names. Thus, when describing, they inherit and extend the names of related thesauri, for example,
“Chinese Thesaurus_Classification”. The disciplines, which a thesaurus belongs to or covers,
can be described with property “dc:subject”, and its values reference categories in the NTW top
classification.