Kneebone L1, Mitchell P
1KurrawongAI, Brisbane, Australia, 2Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, Australia
Biography:
Les has worked across government, research and social service sectors developing linked data vocabularies, including the Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT), Public Policy Taxonomy, Biosecurity Thesaurus and National Skills Taxonomy. Les has also built grey literature databases for government- and industry-led research, including the Analysis & Policy Observatory (APO) and Biosecurity Portal.
At KurrawongAI, Les provides expert advice to clients on using and creating vocabularies. He also manages reference data for the Indigenous Data Network and Biodiversity Data Repository projects. Les leads vocabulary training efforts, ensuring clients understand how to get the most out of the tools and resources we offer.
Pru Mitchell is an education specialist librarian with diverse experience managing national online education and metadata projects across the education sector. As Manager of Information Services at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) she leads the team responsible for production of the Australian Education Index and the Australian Thesaurus of Education Descriptors (ATED). She contributes to the advancement of linked data through Wikidata capacity building activities, and as an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University.
Abstract:
The Australian Thesaurus of Education Descriptors (ATED), maintained by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), has supported education research discovery and indexing for decades. Like many long-lived knowledge organisation systems, however, it is currently maintained using legacy thesaurus management software and workflows that limit interoperability, automation, and integration with contemporary research infrastructure.
This presentation describes a project to modernise ATED by transforming it into a standards-based SKOS vocabulary and migrating its management and publication workflows to a cloud-hosted platform. The project combines semantic web standards, version-controlled vocabulary management, and web-based publication to create a sustainable foundation for ongoing maintenance and reuse.
We discuss the technical and governance challenges involved in moving from a traditional thesaurus environment to a modern knowledge graph approach, including modelling decisions, data transformation, publication architecture, and quality assurance. Particular attention is given to preserving the intellectual investment embodied in a mature, controlled vocabulary while enabling new forms of interoperability with research repositories, discovery services, metadata workflows, and AI-assisted applications.
The project provides a practical case study for research organisations facing similar challenges with legacy knowledge assets. It demonstrates how standards-based vocabularies can be repositioned as durable components of research infrastructure rather than standalone indexing tools, extending their value to new communities and workflows.
By bringing an established education-sector thesaurus into the broader ecosystem of open semantic technologies, the project highlights both the opportunities and challenges of modernising knowledge organisation systems for the next generation of research support.
