Towards terminology services: Experiences with a pilot web service thesaurus browser

The lack of standardised access and interchange formats impedes wider use of terminology resources on the Web. General programmatic access requires commonly agreed protocols. The paper discusses initial experiments with a pilot web service demonstrator for the SKOS API protocol. This 'rich client' browser displayed details for concepts from the GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus (GEMET). The user interface is described and the importance of caching for fast response emphasized. Limitations of the current system are discussed and directions for future work outlined. The API appears to support client applications of this type but further refinement of the API is required.