This document summarizes Joachim Neubert's presentation on using web taxonomies in Drupal. It discusses the hierarchy of relevant Drupal modules, including the taxonomy, web_taxonomy, and plugin modules. It then covers perspectives of various roles including content editors, human visitors, machines, site builders, and plugin programmers. It concludes with discussing future work on the modules, such as improving multilingual support and workflows for adding new terms to web taxonomies.

1. ZBW is member of the Leibniz Association
Using Web Taxonomies in Drupal
Joachim Neubert
ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications
Special Session on Linked Data Vocabularies and Drupal
Kuching
07.09.2012

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Agenda
1) Quick intro into the related modules hierarchy
2) Usage from the perspective of a
a) Content editor
b) Consuming human user
c) Consuming machine
d) Site builder
e) Plugin programmer
3) Work to do

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Drupal modules hierarchy
• taxonomy
In Drupal core, by default enabled for tagging, with autosuggest
input function, provides locally stored terms with identity (e.g.
http://xy.org/taxonomy/term/123)
• web_taxonomy
Contrib module in alpha state, pulls in web-accessible vocabularies
which deliver JSON data (http://drupal.org/project/web_taxonomy),
stores local proxy terms plus external term/concept URI
• Plugins for web_taxonomy
Contrib modules providing plumbing to particular vocabularies (e.g.,
Economics Taxonomies, http://drupal.org/sandbox/jneubert/1447918)

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Content editor‘s perspective

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Human visitor‘s perspective

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Human visitor‘s perspective

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Consuming machine‘s perspective

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Consuming machine‘s perspective

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Site builder‘s perspective 1

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Site builder‘s perspective 2

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Site builder‘s perspective 3

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Site builder‘s perspective – results 
• re-use of ready-made vocabularies built elsewhere
• no current local maintenance work
• no update headaches (just cron-job)
• quite simple configuration
• Linked Data almost for free

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Plugin programmer‘s perspective –Module

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Plugin programmer‘s perspective – Plugin

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Plugin programmer‘s perspective

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Plugin programmer‘s perspective

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Work to do
• Minor annoyances (e.g., commas in terms)
• Multilingual support
• Seperating terms from (perhaps extended) labels for autosuggest list
In the long run, considering workflows for adding not-yet-existing
terms/concepts to web taxonomies
- store term locally and suggest it to taxonomy provider
- review, reject or add (in an out-of-scope process)
- update local proxy with authoritative URI (and perhaps standardized
term form and/or translations)

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Thank you!
Joachim Neubert
ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
j.neubert@zbw.eu
http://zbw.eu/labs
http://zbw.eu/beta/labs (Drupal/LOD prototype)
http://zbw.eu/beta/econ-ws (Web Services for Economics)
See Lin Clarks (creator of web_taxonomy) description of her use case and step-for-step setup
instructions at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/x-html5microdata2/