New Ways of Mapping Knowledge Organization Systems. Using a Semi­Automatic Matching­Procedure for Building Up Vocabulary Crosswalks

 Crosswalks between different vocabularies are an indispensable prerequisite for
integrated and high­quality search scenarios in distributed data environments. Offered through
the web and linked with each other they act as a central link so that users could move back and
forth between different data sources being online available.
In the past, crosswalks between different thesauri have been primarily developed manually. In
the long run the intellectual updating of such crosswalks requires huge personnel expenses.
Therefore, an integration of automatic matching procedures, as for example Ontology Matching
Tools, seems pretty obvious.
On the basis of computer­generated correspondences between the Thesaurus for
Economics (STW) and the Thesaurus for the Social Sciences (TheSoz) our contribution will
explore cross­border approaches between IT­assisted tools and procedures on the one hand
and external quality measurements via domain experts on the other hand. Thus, we will present
techniques to semi­automatically perform vocabulary crosswalks. Due to intellectually evaluated
results of multiple matching tools in the forerun, quality statements concerning the reliability of
further computer­generated crosswalks can be made. This way, the application of various tools
and procedures gradually contributes to an increase in quality. Moreover, on the long­term it
facilitates a continuous update of high­quality vocabulary crosswalks.