MetaNet: a metadata term thesaurus to enable semantic interoperability between metadata domains

Metadata interoperability is a fundamental requirement for access to information within networked knowledge organization systems. The Harmony International Digital Library Project [1] has developed a common underlying data model (the ABC model) to enable the scalable mapping of metadata descriptions across domains and media types. The ABC model, described in [2], provides a set of basic building blocks for metadata modeling and recognizes the importance of 'events' to unambiguously describe metadata for objects with a complex history. In order to test and evaluate the interoperability capabilities of this model, we applied it to some real multimedia examples and analysed the results of mapping from the ABC model to various different metadata domains using XSLT [3]. This work revealed serious limitations in XSLT's ability to support flexible dynamic semantic mapping. In order to overcome this, we developed MetaNet [4], a metadata term thesaurus which provides the additional semantic knowledge which is non-existent within declarative XML-encoded metadata descriptions. This paper describes MetaNet, its RDF Schema [5] representation and a hybrid mapping approach which combines the structural and syntactic mapping capabilities of XSLT with the semantic knowledge of MetaNet, to enable flexible and dynamic mapping among metadata standards

Building a semantic blog support system for gene Learning Objects on Web 2.0 environment / by Wei Yuan.

Blogging has become a popular practice on Internet in recent years, and it has been used as information publishing and participate platforms. In recent years, a style of blog called 'semantic blogs' have been introduced into the field. Semantic blogs are blogs enriched with machine-understandable metadata (Mller, Breslin, & Decker, 2005). They are an extension of regular blogs. Recently, a new web technology theory was proposed called Web 2.0. Unlike traditional web technology which only allows web users to accept information passively, Web 2.0 provides web users the option to actively modify web information. Learning Objects are digital entities deliverable over the Internet. Any number of people can access and use them simultaneously. Moreover, users can collaborate on learning objects and benefit immediately from adding their information or appending others' work to Learning Objects and share with other users over the Internet. This thesis is dedicated to the development of a semantic blog prototype for Gene Ontology annotation and navigation as a Web 2.0 support system. We are developing this semantic blog specifically because we did not find an effective system already in place that can provide support for biomedical researchers. The existing Gene Ontology systems can be classified into various categories: offline applications, client-server applications, web search engines, portals, and FTP servers. Researchers face a number of bottlenecks within the current system; all of them are based on traditional web technology with no collaboration among individual gene ontology researchers, and annotation can only be published by certain organizations. This thesis seeks the possibility to use Learning Object with Gene Ontology along with the semantic of how researchers collaborate as represented by FOAF. We have therefore introduced a new Gene ontology Annotation and navigation System. Colloquially referred to as GAS, it is based on Web 2.0 technologies with extended semantic capabilities that include Gene Ontology semantics, SCORM semantics, FOAF semantics, RSS syndication, aggregation semantics, as well as a useful and important gene ontology and annotation navigation system - Gene Ontology Navigation (GON). Our evaluation of the GAS prototype has proven to be extremely effective