Unleash the full potential of controlled vocabularies.

SkoHub supports a novel approach for finding content on the web. The general idea is to extend the scope of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) to also act as communication hubs for publishers and information seekers. In effect, SkoHub allows to follow specific subjects in order to be notified when new content about that subject is published.

The approach is realized by putting Knowledge Organization Systems online according to the SKOS standard. Additionally, they are exposed using the (social) networking protocols ActivityPub & Linked Data Notifications. This effectively turns the published vocabularies into hubs that provide structured metadata about and links to web content in real time.

The project to create a production-ready version of SkoHub has been carried out by the North-Rhine Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz) in cooperation with graphthinking GmbH with four deliverables. The core is the back end infrastructure for publishing vocabularies on the web (Skohub Vocabs) and for receiving and pushing notifications (SkoHub PubSub). Additionally, we provide an editor to describe web resources according to a common metadata schema and to send notifications (SkoHub Editor). The editor can also be used as a browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome (SkoHub Extension).

For further information, see the blog posts about the project or the material from a workshop at SWIB20 (including lots of walkthrough videos).

Repositories

SkoHub-Pubsub

Inboxes and subscriptions

Code

Status: Alpha

SkoHub Pubsub provides the SkoHub core infrastructure, setting up basic inboxes for subjects plus the ability of subscribing to push subscriptions for each new notification. For details, see the blog post.

SkoHub-Vocabs

SkoHub Vocabs is a static site generator for Simple Knowledge Organization Systems

Code

Status: Stable beta

This part of the project covers the need to easily publish a controlled vocabulary as a SKOS file, with a basic lookup API and a nice HTML view including links to an inbox for each subject (example). Also, each subject is exposed as an ActivityPub actor in order to be used with SkoHub Pubsub. For details, see the blog post.

SkoHub-Editor

Describing & linking learning resources, sending notifications

Code

Status: Alpha

The editor runs in the browser and enables structured description of educational resources published anywhere on the web. It includes validation of the entered content for each field and lookup of controlled values via the API provided by skohub-vocabs. For a walkthrough, see the blog post.

SkoHub-Extension

SkoHub-editor as an extension for Firefox and Chrome

Code

Status: Alpha

The browser extension allows to easily see the editor and the described web resource side by side.

SkoHub-Reconcile

Use your SKOS vocabularies in reconciliation services

Code

Status: Alpha

SkoHub Reconcile provides an API conforming to the Reconciliation API specification. V2 and the current draft are supported. To upload your vocabularies use the SkoHub Reconcile Publish module.

SkoHub Vocabs – static site generator for Simple Knowledge Organization Systems

Credits

The project to create a stable beta version of SkoHub has been funded by the North-Rhine Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz) and was carried out in cooperation with graphthinking GmbH in 2019/2020. This is an Open Source project maintained by the North-Rhine Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz). You are welcome to join the community and contribute!