Knowledge management (KM) systems continue to be developed in step with increases in data and information, and the organisation of these systems requires logical methods that allow semantic querying to identify items that match meaning in natural languages. This book attempts to satisfy that need by presenting an analytical study of existing ontology tools and techniques, and, using Ranganathan's faceted schema, it tries to develop a conceptual framework from a digital library perspective.
Ranganathan's Colon Classification, based on an analytico-synthetic system, is designed to reflect a user's information needs by employing a context-based faceted approach. The idea proposed in this book builds on this key principle and asks the question, why can’t online resources be arranged in the same way on the web?
To address this question the author examines Semantic Web applications to highlight the features and applications significant for digital libraries and electronic collection development. A literature review to gauge the state of art of ontologies in the e-science community is used to evaluate tools and technologies from a digital perspective.
The development of object-oriented frameworks and product line architectures led to the implementation of standardised software architecture, which in turn helped to simplify the application of source codes. Accordingly, Suman outlines the concepts associated with frameworks together with the available tools and technologies of framework generation.
The relationship with human-understandable semantics is even more relevant through standardisation of the Unified Modelling Language (UML), and its use as a notational basis for projects dealing with framework developments is described. The author also outlines and summarises the functioning of argoUML, a specific tool for the development of UML models.
Historically, facet analysis has been applied to knowledge organisation in library and information science and in artificial intelligence for the design of information retrieval systems. In this book Suman introduces a simplified model of facet analysis as an interface between users, information depositors, data repositories and search engines, which may lead to the development of a tool that is understandable to both machines and humans. The model based on the concept of facets and facetisation would then handle the conceptual aspect for translation to Semantic Web languages for comprehension by robots and crawlers.
The faceted model presented here facilitates visual modelling of concepts and conceptual relations in domains and could also be applied in digital libraries to facilitate semantic browsing and searching. In the final chapter Suman reviews the observations and suggestions made in the preceding chapters, with reflections on their application to digital libraries in particular, and information systems in general.
This is a very technical book written for those who are knowledgeable in the field. It represents the results of research aimed at designing a template with generic guidelines and has the potential to be used to develop digital library models for any subject using the analytico-faceted approach.
