Copyright 2006 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.ie

MarcOnt Initiative

Tools for collaborative ontology development

Maciej Dąbrowski, Sebastian Ryszard KrukDigital Enterprise Research Institute

National University of Ireland, Galway

maciej.dabrowski@deri.org

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Outline

• Motivation

• Ontologies in the world of digital libraries

• MarcOnt Tools

• MarcOnt Portal

• MarcOnt REST SOA

• Future work

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Motivation

World of Digital Libraries

Identified Problems:• Interoperability• Format translation

Multiple data formats in DL:• How to support them?• How to translate between them?• Who should create mappings?

Bibtex

MARC21

Dublin Core?

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Real-life problems – user’s expectations

Searching:

• Effective and AccurateWe want correct and fast answers!!

• Intuitive and SimpleAsking questions should be easy.

• MeaningJaguar – a car or an animal?

• ReasoningGive me articles written by students of X in Galway?

Identified problems:

• Intuitive interface for asking complex querries

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Real-life problems - summary

Digital Libraries should provide:

• Interoperability

• Support for many formats

• Complex search features

• Intuitive interfaces

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Usecase scenario

Author

Title

Structured resources:• Author• Title

Data storage allows:• Author • Title

Additional information

cannot be stored!!

Author

Title

Date

TitleAuthor

Regular Systems

Author TitleDate

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MarcOnt Initiative

Motivation:

• Build a bibliographic ontology for the Jerome Digital Library

MarcOnt Initiative goals:

• Deliver a set of tools for collaborative ontologydevelopment

• Collaboration

• Tools for domain experts

• Enable mediation between formats (MMS)

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MarcOnt Ontology

• Central point of MarcOnt Initiative

• Translation and mediation format

• Continuous collaborative ontology improvement

• Knowledge from the domain experts

• Community influence and evaluation

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MarcOnt Ontology

Goals:

• Capture concepts from the legacy bibliographic formats– MARC21, Bibtex, Dublin Core– Lattes, ...

• Create a uniform bibliographic description format for digital libraries.

• Enable the use of Semantic Web technologies (eg. reasoning) to improve capabilities of digital libraries

• Improve interoperability

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Format Translation Scenario

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:1956-10-15Date of death:2004-09-10

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:??Date of death:??

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:??Date of death:??

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:??Date of death:??

Dublin Core

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Format Translation Scenario

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:1956-10-15Date of death:2004-09-10

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:??Date of death:??

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:??Date of death:??

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:1956-10-15Date of death:2004-09-10

RDF Storage

Dublin Core

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:1956-10-15Date of death:2004-09-10

Author:John SmithDate of Birth:1956-10-15Date of death:2004-09-10

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MarcOnt Tools

• MarcOnt Initiative involves development of tools:– MarcOnt Portal – enabling collaborative ontology

development– MarcOnt Mediation Services (MMS) – allows users to

retrieve the description of the given bibliographic resource in multiple formats

– RDF Translator – tool for RDF data translation between formats using the set of given mapping rules

– Rulegenerator – allows defining mapping (translation) rules between concepts from different ontologies.

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MarcOnt Mediation Services

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MarcOnt Mediation Services

MarcOnt OntologyMarcOnt RDF

MARC21 RDF

MARC21 XML

MARC21

Bibtex RDF

Bibtex XML

Bibtex

New format RDF

New format XML

New format

Format translationInteroperability

MarcOnt Mediation Services RDF Translator

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Rulegenerator – a tool for mapping rules creation

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MarcOnt Portal

• Goals– Deliver set of tools for domain experts enabling ontology

development– Support collaborative ontology development process

• Requirements– Easy access (no installation)– Intuitive interface– Ontology editing and versioning– Ontology visualizations

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MarcOnt Portal - architecture

MarcOnt portal GUI

Otherfunctionality

Mapping rulesgenerator

EditorVersioning GUI

MarcOnt portal verisoning system

Filesystem datastore

SemVersionSessionmanager

Web browser

MarcOnt Portal

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MarcOnt REST SOA

• REST idea

• RDF input/output

• OWL-S descrption of services

• RDF parameters validation

• Complex services

Web browser

MarcOnt

User Management

RepositoryManagement

Rating And Voting

Storage

Sesame SemVersion

Thick client

MarcOnt REST SOA

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REST Framework

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MarcOnt Portal – ontology lifecycle

Collaborative ontology development.

Portal provides:• Suggestions• Annotations• Versioning• Ontology editor

Sugested Poposals

Initial Ontology

Proposal discussion

Proposal anotations

Proposal votingProposal autopromoting

Versioning

Next RevisionMarcOnt Portal

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MarcOnt Portal - features

On-line ontology editing Visualization of ontologies

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MarcOnt Portal - features

Comparing versions of ontologies

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MarcOnt Initiative Roadmap

• Lattes – CV platform used in Brasil• Ontology visualisation and graphical edition• FOAF support and user profiling

• MarcOntX agent – automatic integration of concepts from Digital Libraries

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MarcOnt Portal Roadmap

• Re-architecture

• Research on REST-based SOA framework

• Improvement of user interface

• Higher reliability

• Thick client using MarcOnt SOA

• Digital Rights Management

• Support for information sharing standards

Web browser

MarcOnt

User Management

RepositoryManagement

Rating And Voting

Storage

Sesame SemVersion

Thick client

MarcOnt REST SOA

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MarcOnt Initiative and eLearning

• LO require rich description formats

• SOA architecture enables eLearning applications with support for LO description engineering

• Using other applications is not neccessary

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MarcOnt Initiative summary

MarcOnt Initiative goals:

• Create a framework for collaborative ontology development

• Provide domain experts with tools to share their knowledge

• Offer tools for data mediation between different data formats

• Develop MarcOnt bibliographic ontology

• Create a community of users (domain experts)

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MarcOnt Initiative references:

• http://www.marcont.org/

• http://portal.marcont.org/

• http://mms.marcont.org/

• http://wiki.marcont.org/REST/

• http://rdft.marcont.org/

• http://library.deri.ie/