SEKO

SEKO3 datamodel

Latest published version
Not available

This version
0.1 / Jarmo Saarikko / first draft

Date
2026-07-21

Creator
Jarmo Saarikko

Editors
Jarmo Saarikko

Other participants
MUUSA group

Version
This model will be the official version. There may be other versions in other languages.
the RDF/turtle structure is heavily based on the YSO datamodel on finto.fi service

Copyright
Jarmo Saarikko

License
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ - due to unfinshed work

TOC
1 Summary
2 Availability
3 Identifiers 4 Prefixes
5 Conept map
6 Concepts (owl:Class)
7 Group concepts
8 Schemes (skos:conceptScheme)
9 List of features
10 Term labels (rdfs:label)
11 Semantic relationsships (skos:semanticRelation)
12 Mapping relationshiops (skos:mappingRelation)
13 Documentation (skos:Note)
14 Properties of skos:ConceptScheme
15 Other properties (rdf:Property)
16 Development versions
17 Change documentation

Summary

SEKO3 ontology is an trilingual ontology of musical instruments and ensembles (medium of performance). It is based on the monolinugal “Suomalainen esityskokoonpanosanasto” which was based on earlier vocabularies of instruments. It is aimed to support the description of music related resources and authority files in the GLAM sector. In library data it can be used in the 382 and 511 fields to describe the instruments and performers. The structure of the vocabulary as been renewed and added with mappings to other vocabularies to increase itse usability and interoperability.

1 Introduction

The semantic datamodel is based on the W3C SKOS-datamodel. This document will explain how the SKOS- and other RDF-datamodels, such as ISO 25964 iso-thes and Dublin Core Terms have been applied for the use in SEKO3.

2 Availability

This model is available at the National Library of Finland SEKO-repository on Github. The ontology is planned to replace the current monolingual vocabulary in the finto.fi service without any disturbance in the content description work.

The SEKO dataset can be used in library- museum- and other databases in the same way as other authority files. The maintenace of the dataset has been previously on and aleph library system in MARC21 Authority file format.

The future maintenance options are still open, but the Finto VobBench platform is a strong candidate.

3 Identifiers

The datamodel will be using prefixes for the frequently appearing indentfiers in the dataset.

Identifiers of the concepts

Each concept has a permanent identifier (PID) which follows the form: http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:au:seko:NNNNN where NNNNN is usually 5 to 6 digits. The N carries no meaning Any deprecated concepts will remain in the dataset and usually will be forwarded to a remaining concept.

Identifiers of the Seko dataset

4 Prefixes

The datamaodel uses classes and properties from several different vocabularies. In the data they are refeerred to with prefixes listed below. The “common” ontology prefixes used are

@prefix adms: <http://www.w3.org/ns/adms#> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
@prefix dct: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix rdau: <http://rdaregistry.info/Elements/u/> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .
@prefix skos-thes: <http://purl.org/iso25964/skos-thes#> .
@prefix voaf <http://purl.org/vocommons/voaf#> .
@prefix xl <http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos-xl#> .
@prefix xsd <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
@prefix xml: <http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace> .

These specific “non-standard” prefixist will be used in addtion

@prefix bf: <http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/> .                    # Bibframe datamodel
@prefix lcmpt: <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/performanceMediums/> .      # LC Medium of Performance Thesaurus
@prefix hornbostelandsachs: <http://www.mimo-db.eu/HornbostelAndSachs/> . # H-S classification, v2011
@prefix mimo: <http://www.mimo-db.eu/InstrumentsKeywords/> .              # MIMO instrument vocabulary
@prefix mstatus: <https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/mstatus/> .               # status codes
@prefix seko: <http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:au:seko:> .                       # seko dataset
@prefix seko-meta: <http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:au:seko-meta:> .             # seko defintions
@prefix seko-issues: <https://github.com/NatLibFi/SEKO/issues/> .         # Github issues of SEKO3
@prefix yse-issue: <https://github.com/Finto-ehdotus/YSE/issues/> .       # Github issues of YSO
@prefix yso: <http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/> .                              # YSO- and YSO places concepts

5 Conept map

6 Concepts (owl:Class)

Based on the YSO -datamodel, each concept may belong only to one of the four disjoint classes: general concepts, hierarchical/group concepts (and perhaps deprecated concept like in YSO skosext:DeprecatedConcept)

Each instrument or ensemble has a type skos:Concept and either seko-meta:Instrument or seko-meta:Ensemble. A performer who is not classified as an “instrument” can be considered as an “ensemble” of size one.

Deprecated concepts are of type seko-meta:DeprecatedConcept and they have owl:deprecated “TRUE”.

Class Type Subclass
skos:ConceptScheme owl:Class -
skos:Collection owl:Class skos-thes:ThesaurusArray, skos-thes:ConceptGroup
skos:Concept owl:Class seko-meta:Concept, seko-meta:Hierarchy, seko-meta:Instrument, seko-meta:Ensemble
  skos:concept
Label Concept / Käsite
description Top class for all conepts in the ontology
  seko-meta:Instrument
Label Instrument / Soitin
Description Concept for grouping instruments
Note Eeasier than doing with a specific Thesaurus Array

- TBC

7 Group concepts

8 Schemes (skos:conceptScheme)

Schemes used in the dataset

9 List of properties

Range (rdfs:range) us used fore describing that certain values of the object are instances of the class it is pointing to. The property rdfs:range can also show the the values of the property are of certain type of literals.

Domain (rdfs:domain) property shows that certain property is applied only with certain classes. rdfs:domain is an instance of rdf:Property, which shows that any resource which has a named property is also an instance of one or more classes.

Property rdfs:type rdfs:domain rdfs:range
dc:description rdf:Property skos:ConceptScheme rdfs:Literal
TBC- - - -

10 Term labels (rdfs:label)

The unit of information is a Concept. In ontologies the relationships between concepts are identified with unique URI-identifiers. The same concept may be referred to with multiple different labels e.g. in different languages. The first form of presentation of a concept is their expression in a natural language: labels. SKOS provides three properties with which a term can be attached to a concept: skos:prefLabel, skos:altLabel and skos:hiddenLabel. Their type is rdf:Property.

. skos:hiddenLabel

11 Semantic relationsships (skos:semanticRelation)

Herarchical and symmentric relations.

Group relationships

Temporal and spatial coverage

12 Mapping relationshiops (skos:mappingRelation)

Mapping relationshiops are used for referring to concepts in other vocabularies.

13 Documentation properties (skos:Note)

Properties for Concepts

14 Properties of skos:ConceptScheme

Planned Schemes: seko:, seko-groups: (e.g. for classification classes), seko-deprecated:

15 Other properties (rdf:Property)

https://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/#Property In addition to describing the specific classes of things they want to describe, user communities also need to be able to describe specific properties that characterize those classes of things. In RDF Schema, properties are described using the RDF class rdf:Property, and the RDF Schema properties rdfs:domain, rdfs:range, and rdfs:subPropertyOf. All properties in RDF are described as instances of class rdf:Property.

Properties for Property entities

Ontology specific internal ontologies are defined in the seko-meta.ttl file.

YSO-ontologian aihealue on yso:p1946

16 Development versions

17 Change documentation