ABSTRACT
The NKOS Community is described in this entry. NKOS (https://nkos.slis.kent.edu/) is an informal network of academics and practitioners who are interested in the use of knowledge organization systems (KOS) in networked information environments. The general aim of the community is to enable KOS to act as networked information services (both machine-to-machine and human–computer), and support the description and retrieval of information resources on the Internet. The community is a forum for presentation and discussion of KOS applications, and interchange of ideas, from technical issues to intellectual, semantic, and terminological problems related to the use of KOS. The participants come from a variety of disciplines, and from academia as well as practice, and interact and communicate by a diverse set of means: annual workshops in the United States and Europe, a Web site, a mailing list, and publication of special journal issues and working papers about contemporary issues. The NKOS community represents topical diversity, informality, and multiple perspectives on networked KOS applications. There is an implicit danger that this variety diverts the focus and discussion. However, it appears from the analysis that the constancy in the organization of the activities and the well-established peer review process is adequate to attract participants, maintain satisfactory quality, and keep focus in multiplicity.
