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Linking Florida's Natural History uses species information as the nexus for pulling together scientific data from museum specimen databases and library catalogs of scientific literature. The goals of the IMLS funded project were to integrate specimen records and bibliographic records about the same species; to create an interface equally easy for scientists, students and laymen to use; and to enhance bibliographic description to make it more usable in a taxonomic and environmental context. Although some development was required to enable Z39.50‐based broadcast search across bibliographic and specimen collections, the bulk of the work was devoted to identifying and overcoming inconsistencies between the resource description practices of libraries and museums. Enriching records with taxonomic and geographic information was also a challenge.

The article is focused on the integrated water management and remote data access that is accomplished through REMSSBOT in the Scheldt region. The general Scheldt environmental situation is presented, together with the objectives of the REMSSBOT system in this specific application area. The demonstrator functionality, including navigation facilities and retrieval of the provided information, are described. The use and importance of the Catalogue of Data Sources is also outlined. Finally, the current application of REMSSBOT in environmental management, performed by the different institutions in the Scheldt region, is defined.

This article provides an overview of recent developments relating to the application of thesauri in information organisation and retrieval on the World Wide Web. It describes some recent thesaurus projects undertaken to facilitate resource description and discovery and access to wide‐ranging information resources on the Internet. Types of thesauri available on the Web, thesauri integrated in databases and information retrieval systems, and multiple‐thesaurus systems for cross‐database searching are also discussed. Collective efforts and events in addressing the standardisation and novel applications of thesauri are briefly reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the quality of the connections (linkset) among thesauri published as Linked Data on the Web. It extends the cross-walking measures with two new measures able to evaluate the enrichment brought by the information reached through the linkset (lexical enrichment, browsing space enrichment). It fosters the adoption of cross-walking linkset quality measures besides the well-known and deployed cardinality-based measures (linkset cardinality and linkset coverage).

The paper applies the linkset measures to the Linked Thesaurus fRamework for Environment (LusTRE). LusTRE is selected as testbed as it is encoded using a Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) published as Linked Data, and it explicitly exploits the cross-walking measures on its validated linksets.

The application on LusTRE offers an insight of the complementarities among the considered linkset measures. In particular, it shows that the cross-walking measures deepen the cardinality-based measures analysing quality facets that were not previously considered. The actual value of LusTRE’s linksets regarding the improvement of multilingualism and concept spaces is assessed.

The paper considers skos:exactMatch linksets, which belong to a rather specific but a quite common kind of linkset. The cross-walking measures explicitly assume correctness and completeness of linksets. Third party approaches and tools can help to meet the above assumptions.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the quality of linksets. Several approaches formalise and evaluate Linked Data quality focusing on data set quality but disregarding the other essential component: the connection among data.

The article describes the system architecture concept applied in the REMSSBOT project, focusing especially on the use of the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS). The design approach is explained, taking into account the existing situation and the general requirements for environmental information in the REMSSBOT participating regions. The REMSSBOT meta‐information system is presented, together with a description of the EEA ETC/CDS and Thesaurus, on which the REMSSBOT CDS datamodel was based. The functionality of the CDS is also shown, as well as the search and navigation approach. Last, the standards and components used for the implementation of the system architecture are given, together with a short description of the implementation, design and process itself.

Aslib Library holds a collection of thesauri, subject headings and classification schemes which are used to answer members' enquiries about the existence of schemes for particular subject fields and many of which are available on loan for two weeks. Our policy is to acquire all significant English language publications and bilingual or multilingual items with English as one of the languages.

The Norwegian Ministry of Environment has undertaken to build and implement a meta information system for environmental information/data. The objective is to increase availability of cross sector information and efficiency in use of environmental information/data. The system is to be accessible via Internet, but based on SQL‐database. Further the same system may be used locally by the governmental institutions and centrally at national level. Access will be public and free of charge, software will be free of charge. The metadata will be characterized according to European standards; amongst others, by use of the multilingual environmental thesaurus (GEMET) and a standard for mandatory field entries. Interoperability with other systems is assured by used of standard communication protocols (Z.39.50). To define objectives at a high precision level and to have a development guide, a technical “Systems Requirements” were defined. Development is done with users, and by means of prototypes, laboratory and field tests.

The topic of environmental protection has always been of great concern in Germany, the establishment of environmental data sources started in the 1970s. The development of environmental information system technology in Germany is outlined and two examples are given: the Environmental Planning and Information System (UMPLIS) and the Integrated Public Environmental Information System (UIS) Baden‐Wuerttemberg. Relevant German environmental data sources are discussed, such as Environmental Literature Database (ULIDAT), Environmental Research Projects Database (UFORDAT), and Environmental Law Databases (URDB), as well as the chemical databases which comprise environmental information – the BEILSTEIN database and the Landolt‐Boernstein database. The Information System for Environmental Chemicals with its four metadatabases – Metadatabase of Literature on Environmental Chemicals (DALI), Metadatabase of Online Databases for Environmental Chemicals (DADB), Metadatabase of CD‐ROMs for Environmental Chemicals (DACD), and the Metadatabase of Internet Resources (DAIN).

In general, regular selection tools for reference materials do not provide adequate coverage for government documents and technical reports. The situation is improving in the case of government documents in recent times as the awareness of the importance of documents is growing. For example, Reference Services Review publishes surveys and special features on government documents. Libraries Unlimited publishes a biennial guide titled, Government Reference Books. In contrast, very little attention is paid to the technical reports literature and they remain unexploited by the average reference librarian.

The purpose of this paper, which increases and deepens what was expressed in a previous work (Mazzocchi et al., 2007), is to scrutinize the underlying assumptions of the types of relations included in thesauri, particularly the genus-species relation. Logicist approaches to information organization, which are still dominant, will be compared with hermeneutically oriented approaches. In the light of these approaches, the nature and features of the relations, and what the notion of a priori could possibly mean with regard to them, are examined, together with the implications for designing and implementing knowledge organizations systems (KOS).

The inquiry is based on how the relations are described in literature, engaging in particular a discussion with Hjørland (2015) and Svenonius (2004). The philosophical roots of today’s leading views are briefly illustrated, in order to put them under perspective and deconstruct the uncritical reception of their authority. To corroborate the discussion a semantic analysis of specific terms and relations is provided too.

All relations should be seen as “perspectival” (not as a priori). On the other hand, different types of relations, depending on the conceptual features of the terms involved, can hold a different degree of “stability.” On this basis, they could be used to address different information concerns (e.g. interoperability vs expressiveness).

Some arguments that the paper puts forth at the conceptual level need to be tested in application contexts.

This paper considers that the standpoint of logic and of hermeneutic (usually seen as conflicting) are both significant for information organization, and could be pragmatically integrated. In accordance with this view, an extension of thesaurus relations’ set is advised, meaning that perspective hierarchical relations (i.e. relations that are not logically based but function contingently) should be also included in such a set.