Subjects and Places in Mandala

Subjects and Places let you categorize content in Mandala using special labels called Knowledge Maps.

Knowledge Maps, or KMaps, can be crudely described as "labels in a hierarchal tree format." If you're familiar with the concept of ontologies, controlled vocabularies, or semantic fields, then KMaps won't be new to you. However, each Knowledge Map also has its own data (alternate names, descriptions, and more), visible through the Subjects and Places viewers. A KMap's metadata, along with its position relative to other Knowledge Maps in the hierarchy, provides valuable context about a term.

Content created in different Mandala tools can use the same Knowledge Map: this joins content across tools. 

To summarize, Knowledge Maps are: 

•  subject and place controlled vocabularies…
•  …represented in a ontology… 
•  ...with their own independent structured data (names, descriptions, illustrations, maps, and more)…
•  ...that index content across Mandala, and
•  …that connect: 
  •   content from one Mandala tool with content from another tool; and 
  •   a Mandala asset with information about a term; and
  •   a term with related Knowledge Map terms. 

Knowledge Map collaborators can either be general users or editors. These different types of collaborators work on different websites, though the information is shared between sites. Anyone with a UVa NetBadge account can be a general user, but the Knowledge Maps team needs to give you special privileges if you want to be an editor. 

Video Overview

If you want to learn about Knowledge Maps in-depth, we've put together a mini three-part course. You can watch it below or in this Mandala Audio-Video collection.