SemanticWeb Research

Andrew Lumpe & David Wicks, Seattle Pacific University

Presentation at Sloan Conference, October 2009.

"Antoniou, Grigoris and Van Harmelen, Frank. A semantic web primer. Second edition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. "

This is the second edition of the very popular primer that introduces the semantic Web. Explaining what the semantic Web is involves not only contrasting it to the familiar 'everyday' Web, but also sorting out the various visions of the semantic Web suggested over the last decade. Explaining how it works involves relating a thicket of angle-bracket technology to semantics and logic processing. This book is an excellent introduction to both of these explanations.

"A naïve ontology for concepts of time and space for searching and learning"

Introduction. In this paper, we propose a new approach for developing naïve ontology as the basis for optimal information access interfaces for multimedia digital documents intended for novice users.
Method. We try to elicit the knowledge structure of domain novices and patterns of its modification in their searching and learning processes by eye-tracker and showing eye-movements in the post-search interviews.
Analysis. Recorded interview data were fully transcribed and coded using Atlas.ti and analysed following a bottom-up strategy of the constant-comparative technique.
Results. We developed a taxonomy of knowledge modification which includes (1) adding, (2) correcting, (3) limiting, (4) relating, (5) specifying and (6) transforming.
Conclusion.The taxonomy may be expanded and elaborated as the project progress and findings are expected to be incorporated into the design of the naïve ontology. The study results provided theoretical implications on knowledge building, methodological implications on data collection using eye-tracker and showing eye-movements in the post-search interviews and useful information on the design of information access interface for novices users.

"Many languages are in serious danger of being lost and if nothing is done to prevent it, half of the world's approximately 6,500 languages will disappear in the next 100 years. Language data are central to the research of a large social science community, including linguists, anthropologists, archeologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists interested in the culture of indigenous people. The death of a language entails the loss of a community's traditional culture, for the language is a unique vehicle for its traditions and culture. In this paper, we describe the effort undertaken at Wayne State University to preserve endangered languages using the state-of-the-art information technologies. We discuss the issues involved in such an effort, and present the architecture of a distributed digital library which will contain various data of endangered languages in the forms of text, image, video and audio files and include advanced tools for intelligent cataloguing, indexing, searching and browsing information on languages and language analysis. Various Semantic Web technologies such as XML, OLAC, and ontologies are used so that the digital library is developed as a useful linguistic resource on the Semantic Web."

"Special issue on the Semantic Web
Issue Editor's Introduction
ball The Semantic Web: opportunities and challenges for next-generation Web applications, by Shiyong Lu, Ming Dong and Farshad Fotouhi, Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA
ball Forms of labour in information systems, by Julian Warner, School of Management and Economics, The Queen's University of Belfast, UK
ball The Semantic Web, universalist ambition and some lessons from librarianship, by Terrence A. Brooks, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
ball The necessity for information space mapping for information retrieval on the semantic web, by Gregory B. Newby, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA"

"Events [Cal. 2009]
Finance - Breaking the conspiracy for ignorance (Amsterdam, 5 October 2009), Semantic training of TopQuadrant (Amsterdam, 5 October 2009), OWLED 2009 (Chantilly, VA, 23 October 2009), Rr2009 (Virginia, 25 October 2009), ISWC2009 (Chantilly, VA, 25 October 2009, subevents: SDoW2009, SMR2-2009) view all events …"

"A place for anything related to K-12 and higher education applications of the semantic web."

"SemHE 2009: Semantic web applications for learning and teaching support in higher education"

"Semantic Web: Web 3.0 in Education"

"The mantra of the information age has been "The more information the better!" But what happens when we search the web and get so much information that we can't sort through it, let alone evaluate it? Enter the semantic web, or Web 3.0. Among other things, the semantic web makes information more meaningful to people by making it more understandable to machines."

"Earlier this month, I wrote about the Higher Education sector's interest in the opportunities presented by use of semantic technologies.

Today I published a podcast with Thanassis Tiropanis, project manager for the recently finished SemTech report and co-organiser of a workshop on Semantic Web applications for learning and teaching which takes place in Nice on 30 September."

"The Semantic Web & Social Software"

"International Conference for Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web (ICSD2009)
September 8-11, 2009 - University of Trento, Trento (ITALY)


Digital libraries, in the central view of the term, focus on storing and organizing digital objects and providing access to these objects through professional or user-generated metadata or content-based search (full text, image content, full musical score). In an expanded view, DLs also support annotation, generation or editing of digital objects and provide tools for processing digital objects. The semantic Web focuses on the formal representation of data for more precise retrieval and, more importantly, for reasoning so that many often disparate items of data can be combined to directly answer a user's question or to devise a plan of action. ICDLSW addresses two main questions:


(1) How can digital libraries support Semantic Web functionality? (2) How can Semantic Web technology improve digital libraries? "

"2009-09-01 [09:30 - 11:00] : Session 3A: Web, Semantics and Ontologies I"

2009-09-01 [14:00 - 15:30] : Session 4A: Web, Semantics and Ontologies II

2009-09-01 [16:00 - 17:30] : Session 5A: Web, Semantics and Ontologies III

2009-09-02 [09:30 - 11:00] : Session 6B: Semantic Web and Ontologies IV (short papers)

"The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.[1][2]"

"Semantic Web Landscape 2009"

"Ivan Herman discusses Semantic Web activity at the World Wide Web Consortium"

Collection of publications on the activities involving the semantic web. This is a very useful resource.

The Semantic Web Awareness Barometer 2009 aims at providing the reader with a brief overview over
current trends and possible future topics in the fast evolving and dynamic field of web semantics. It
also addresses Social Software, since these two areas are expected to condition each other. The data
analysed in this survey was primarily collected among Semantic Web specialists from science and
industry.

"The fourth of July holiday is upon us. And this year, why not celebrate democracy by checking out the open source project GovTrack.us, a site where you can follow the status of federal legislation and members of Congress?

The government, of course, puts lots of data about the activities of the U.S. Congress on the web. THOMAS, for example, provides legislative information from the Library of Congress. But much of the time, the user interfaces to sites like this are less than optimal, and the data in each exists in its own individual silo.

GovTrack.us is one graduate student's attempt to change the experience when it comes to getting information on pending legislation (and about a decade's worth of historical data on the topic), both in terms of a more accessible interface and pulling together data on the topic from multiple government sources. "