0I've been working both on the competency questions for the ontology I'm working on, and the ways to integrate it better into the Academic Institution Internal Structure Ontology (AIISO). I worry a little that there is some work to do to reconcile UK academic structure with US academic structure -- the biggie I see at first glance is a need for a aiiso:Campus class to represent universities with campus a here, there, and everywhere. But overall things are moving happily toward the reconciliation. I'm posting up a new version of the university ontology based on a first stab at that reconciliation, and some rethinking of some things.

0 The latest OWL-Doc is here. A turtle file generated by Protege is here. There are also some tentative examples here.

0 To model toward the kinds of questions I'd like to address, I've first followed the dbpedia ontology in just going pragmatic. This loses some power, perhaps, but it also just lets me get some things done. More -- I hope -- it helps me make things easier for the implementers of the ontology in an application (okay, I'm also thinking that'd be me someday soon). A really abstract ontology like UMBEL pushes responsibilities out to the implementer in a big way. That's appropriate. But it's also hard to implement into a user experience. Frankly, I worry a bit about pushing things out to that degree. So I'm aiming toward a middle ground, and hoping that as time goes on we'll all be able to reconcile things at an upper level. For now, I'm going down and dirty.

0 The first big change to the ontology is a univ:StudyThing class to hold all the different types of things being studied. So a univ:CourseGroup (a subclass of foaf:Group) might study the following, all of which are subclasses of univ:StudyThing

StudyTopic

A topic being studies, like Quantum Chromodynamics

StudyWork

A work being studied (equivalent to FRBR:Work)

StudyPerspective

A perspective or theoretic approach used, like Feminism, Deconstructionism, Historiography, Newtonian Mechanics, etc.

StudyTool

A tool used in the study, like a GPS device or a blog. (Textbooks, documents, or other resources are typically represented via the subclass of StudyTool, StudyDocument, generally a FRBR:Manifestation and a bibo:Document).

0 The second big change is the introduction a univ:StudyThingGrouping class and some properties to let univ:StudyThings get associated with one another. So let's say a univ:CourseGroup is studying "The Canterbury Tales" with the 3rd edition of the Riverside Chaucer. A univ:StudyThingGrouping will let you put those together as follows:

ex:UnivCourseGroup a univ:CourseGroup ;
	univ:studyThingGrouping ex:StudyThingGrouping1 . 

ex:StudyThingGrouping1 a univ:StudyThingGrouping ;
	univ:work dbpedia:The_Canterbury_Tales ; 
	univ:document rdfbookmashup:03952906417 ;

0 Here's where things feel both sloppy and pragmatic. There are properties like univ:studiesWithWork, univ:studiesWithTool, univ:studiesWithPerspective, and univ:studiesWithTopic (and subproperty univ:studiesWithDocument). These, starting with 'studiesWith' are meant to relate a univ:CourseGroup and a univ:StudyWork, univ:StudyTool, etc. That is, they express a broad relationship between what the CourseGroup does and the resources they do it with. On the other hand, there are properties like univ:work, univ:tool (and subproperty univ:document), univ:perspective, univ:topic. These operate within a univ:StudyThingGroup to make the connections between, for example, a topic and the perspective used on it in the univ:CourseGroup. If I were better with OWL, I might be able to express the implications, like that if a univ:CourseGroup has a univ:StudyThingGrouping, and therin lies the triple univ:StudyThingGrouping univ:document rdfbookmashupisbn:0123456789, then the 'parent' univ:CourseGroup univ:studiesWithDocument rdfbookmaushisb:0123456789 . I ain't that good. Which makes this sloppy, but -- I hope -- get's the job done.

0 On the other hand, it's easy for me to see cases in which the deeper level of expressivity offered by a univ:StudyThingGrouping is inappropriate. So I suppose I'll join the group of pushers -- implementers get to deal with it.