ONTOLOGY: A TOOL FOR ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE

PratibhaA. Gokhale'
Knowledge organization (KO) is a core subject in Library and Information Science
(LIS) studies. Classification, cataloguing, and indexing traditionally formed its
backbone. The faceted classification schemes with some variations are being used to
classify. documents on topics at micro level. With the uncontrollable flow of
information on the Internet, there is an urgent need to capture and organize the
information so as to retrieve it in a meaningful way. ontology is one of the tools for
study in LIS. The present paper gives a brief overview of ontology for organizing
the vast stock of knowledge on the internet with the view to bringing conceptual
understanding.

KEYWORDS: ontology, Classification, Indexing, Knowledge orgnization

1 INTRODUCTION
Classification, though natural to human beings, is an intellectual process for
understanding abstract entities in a logical manner. In this Internet age, a number
of experiments are on to create a semantic web for interlinking the information on
the World Wide Web (web). They include use of free text or key words,
clustering methods based on re-occurrence and/ co-occurrence of 'words, natural
language processing and use of neural networks for browsing and searching. the
web. Both controlled vocabularies and natural language indexing continue to be
used by many databases on the Internet for organizing information. Ontology is
one these methods for capturing and coordinating the information from the web.
Traditionally, ontology as a subject belongs to Philosophy with its focus :on
logic. The term is used to denote the study of "What is What?" or the structure
and properties of different aspects of the actual reality of the universe. Its origin
dates back to Aristotle's period (ontologia).The term ontology was first coined in
1613 by Rudolf Gockel and Jacob Lorhard. According to the-Oxford English
Dictionary,[l] its first recorded use in English is in the year 1721, meaning a
science and. study of "Being" or "What it is"? - particularly where the inter-
relationship of the nature of problems is to be investigated. Philosophers, such as,
Kant, Leibniz, Bolzano [2] have explained its meaning in a similar way.
It is an abstract concept, an attempt to know and unfold the mystery of.the
universe.

1 Department of Library and Information Science, University of'Mumbai, Vidyanagari,

Santacruz(E), Mumbai 400 098. E- mail: pratibha-gokhale@yahoo.com

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The 22nd edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) has classified it
in class 111 Philosophy, just below Metaphysics as Existence" or Essence of
something "or "Nothingness".
2 CONTEXTUAL DEPENDENCY AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
We live in a world of information and information organization (KO) forms
the backbone of LIS. Within the formal branches of' LIS, classification has its
unique status which is shared by indexing. Both are pre-requisites for meaningful
information retrieval which is context dependent and that forms the basis for the
study of ontology in the present scenario. The early roots of classification are in
the vedic literature and its principles are equally applicable even today in the
Internet age in the form of subject directories and subject gateways:
Periodic,table of chemical elements prepared by Mendeleyev which arranges
metals and non metals by number of protons in the nucleus is probably the best
example of simple ontology. The principle of facet, analysis and relationship
among individual foci form the basic philosophy of classification which has
retained its importance due to emergence of inter-disciplinary and multi-
disciplinary knowledge areas. For example, bioinformatics is a fusion ,of ideas
from subjects like biology, genetics, DNA and computer science having several
applications. Study of biometrics is equally important in agriculture as well as in
crime detection, which in fact, is nothing but.context dependency and an effort to
*know "What is what?".. Therefore ontology is to be revisited in,the technology-
driven world of information although its roots are in Philosophy. It is a collection
of concepts. arranged in a hierarchy of categories, combined with the relationships
between those concepts, in order to reflect an area of knowledge. The functions of
ontology are very similar to classification - both are grounded in theory through a
shared understanding of a domain and their roots are embedded in philosophy,
logic and cognitive psychology.
3 ONTOLOGY IN PRESENT CONTEXT
Specialists in different branches of knowledge study a phenomenon for
different purposes. For example, a chemist may study a compound for
synthesizing another compound or for analyzing a drug composition or to explain
chemical process and their relationship with energy conservation. Similarly
urbanization may be studied from the point of view of traffic control, pollution
control, growth of slums, land reclamation, waste disposal or for construction of
an over-bridge. The search for information is mandatory in any case but the

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 Ontology: A Tool for Organization of Knowledge

difference is in its end use. The key word approach provides a one-to-one
relationship between concepts, which works well in the traditional set up of
documents where knowledge is reasonably well organized. In the complex and
diffused .information environment, a one-to-many relationship is needed at the
indexing and concept mapping stage. A whole new method needs to be developed
to semantically map the overlapping subject fields which are also dominated by
variety of forms of documents from where information could.be obtained.
The Internet is a limitless storehouse of vastly disorganized data and a chaotic
repository of the collective output of the world's printing press. Yet it has
achieved a place of prominence and is almost an indispensable tool in the search
for information. The information workers have the domain knowledge of
identifying, acquiring, analyzing, classifying, cataloguing and. thereby organizing
the resources and the information embedded in them. The same skills can be
successfully applied to classify and organize the "Chaotic Intelligence" of the
Internet-based information which is nothing but "ONTOLOGY", which is nearer
or closer to a thesaurus. A thesaurus will offer only relationships but an ontology
will offer meaning, definitions, taxonomy and relationships - all at the same time.
Due to the digital information explosion it has become necessary to develop
new retrieval tools. Some efforts are made to use classificatory principles to
organize digital information. Controlled vocabularies and Natural Language
Processing used by some databases on the Internet work better for simple or
straightforward subjects. But where knowledge areas are not delineated and they
are highly specialized, the one to one context is no longer sufficient to reflect a
fusion of subjects.
Thus in a complex world of information, devices indicating one- to- many
contextual relationships among concepts becomes essential. This can be brought
out during concept mapping. Creating a thesaurus is time-consuming and needs
subject experts. An ontology provides an answer to this. It is multi-dimensional in
its approach in organizing the information. It can provide any number of linkages
to each concept or keywords as and when required. It makes use of both standard
terms as well as free text terms. It enables sharing of commonly understandable
terms and is multi-dimensional. It defines a set of elements where concepts and
terms in a knowledge area can be represented. Along with a list of terms, it has a
set of inference rules or heuristics which are paired appropriately. An ontology is
created using special software programmes. Ontologies have been developed as
advanced* information processing tools that allow computers to process
information resources, based on their corresponding concepts. B.C. Vickery was
one of the first information scientists to draw attention to the term ontology for
organizing knowledge. Over the past few years, the term has gained a new

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meaning and is practiced in several fields, like Knowledge Engineering, WWW,

Information Management, Molecular Biology, Nuclear Medicine, Industrial
Applications in Engineering or for that matter any topic at its micro level. The
most widely used definition of ontology in the context of information and
knowledge management is the one given by Gruber [3] which states that
"ontology is a formal explicit specification of shared conceptualization." The,
word "formal" points to the fact that an ontology should be based on formal logic
in order to be machine readable and the word "shared" indicates that it should
include shared and-agreed notions of vocabulary in a given domain. Ontologies
are-custom built for each domain to capture its vocabulary along with its unique
perspective on specialized information.
4 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A THESAURUS AND AN ONTOLOGY.
Thesaurus Ontology
It belongs to post coordinate indexing era Its roots are in philosophy
It is a controlled vocabulary tool with It is a controlled vocabulary tool using free text
descriptors to reflect subject content of a source terms to describe a specific subject domain
and a subject domain
It is somewhat rigid in its construction it is totally flexible allowing multiple choice of
entries
It has single dimension It is multidimensional in nature
It can be manually created or machine It can be created only by using high level
generated software programmes
It is built on the principle of literary warrant Literary warrant concept as well as problem
solving methods and form its knowledge based
systems basis
Only three kinds of relationships exist As BT, The relationships are potentially poly
RT, NT hierarchical in nature
It does not provide definitions,in, Scope Note It can provide definitions, meanings 4nd
field relationships
The relationships are exhibited in vertical No fixed pattern of representing concepts, can
-manner be interlinked as such
The super-ordinate and subordinate classes are The super-ordination and sub-ordination of
determined solely in accordance with the classes is mostly decided by the ontology
knowledge domain developer depending on the purpose

5 NEW TRENDS
In the field of classification or more generally in information organization in
association with ontology, taxonomy, folksonomy, content management are
developing, making the role of classification in the digital era all the more
specific.

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 Ontology: A Tool for Organization of Knowledge

Fig.l: ontology model for databases.Source: http://ontolog.cim3net/file work/

Taxonomy: In modern parlance, taxonomy applies to a system or software
designed to organize information, so that it may be stored, maintained and
retrieved.
It separates the elements in a given knowledge. area into smaller hierarchical
groups like classification in the form of terms and then shows their relationship. A
taxonomy is often. created by referring to thesauri, classification schemes, or
indexes. It combines the software programme with human intellectual efforts and
thus provides a means for identifying, locating and retrieving the desired
information.
Content Management: A content management system defines the overall life
cycle of the content from its generation to publication, generally in a web
environment. Content may be of any type of digital information in the form of a
text, video, e- journal, images, websites or online data.

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Folksonomy: It is a collaboratively generated open ended labeling system that

enables users to categorize contents such as web pages, online photographs, web
links, images from web and so on. Podcasts are audio/video files which are
syndicated downloads and Flickr is an online and shareable photo management
application.
6'. APPLICATIONS OF ONTOLOGY
McGuiness in 2003 has highlighted a number of applications and
characteristics of ontology. Some of them are:
"* It supports website organization;
"* It supports browsing'and searching;
"* It is useful for checking the consistency of terms;
"* It provides a means for interoperability among systems by using shared
vocabulary;
"* It helps to distinguish the context among similar terms if there is a
recurrence of a term. This is possible due to its high level programming
language;
"* It provides controlled vocabulary which can be used by human beings as
well as by computer to access and manage information;
"* It can set definitions, meaning, relationships in an orderly manner. A quick
look at an ontology can give an idea about the contents of the website; and
"* It can be used for validation and verification of data.
7 TYPES OF ONTOLOGIES
At a conceptual level, following types of ontologies are identified:
"* Terminological ontology: It uses unified terms, in a given domain, e.g. The
Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) developed by the National
Library of Medicine (NLM);
"* Informational ontology: It uses the record structure of a database, e.g. the
medical records of patients;
• Knowledge Modeling ontology: This is used for developing Artificial
Intelligence based systems which expresses concepts. Expert Systems fall
in this category;
"* Domain ontology:, It expresses conceptualization specific for a particular
domain; and
"* Generic ontology: It is of a general nature showing origin of a subject
domain.

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8 WORK OF W3C
The semantic web is the communication medium between the users and the
computer which uses semantically coded information. The World Wide
Web(W3C) Semantic Web Activity, in collaboration with a number of researchers
and partners is working towards the development of enabling technologies in such
a way, so as to allow the data on the web to be used more effectively for
integration and linking. Ontologies form the basis for interoperability. The
Semantic Web Advance Development (SWAD), The DARPA Agent Metadata
Language/ontology Inference Layer (DAML + OIL) and the Web ontology
Language (OWL) are some of the projects of W3C.
In the field of Artificial Intelligence, an ontology is used to arrange abstract
entities admitted to a language system. It is applied in problem solving methods
and knowledge-based systems.
9 BUILDING UP AN ONTOLOGY
The skeletal methodology for building up an ontology suggests following
steps:
* Identify the scope of ontology in a domain specific subject area and collect
all appropriate sources;
e Collect all possible terms in the domain;
* Create taxonomy;
* Identify important concepts and their relationship (ontology capture);
* Add synonyms;
* Select a language and do the coding for concepts, relations and individual
terms (ontology coding);
* Arrange the concepts in an alphabetical sequence;
* Verify and evaluate the ontology by subject specialists; and
* Revise it periodically.
The basic criterion involved in evaluating an ontology include-
* Usability;
* Ease of navigation and visualization;
• Extraction and learning capabilities;
* Languages that support export of multiple formats;
* Version control; and
* Validation and consistency.
The methodology for developing an ontology generally utilizes PDF/ XML/
HTML format recommended by W3C. It is represented by a pre-defined machine

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language. Tools like Ontolingua, WebOnto are freely available on the internet for
developing new ontology.
10 ONTOLOGY AND LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
The heterogeneous structure of information on the web, both semantically and
syntactically, necessitates the development of a standard format for digital
information exchange. Libraries and information centres are generally using
classification, indexing, and vocabulary control for organizing information and
cataloguing and metadata for bibliographic description. An ontology can
incorporate both at a time, and yet can show contextual relationship The web
based services, subject gateways, search engines follow their own system for
organizing information, with the result there is no standardization for retrieval of
information, either in terms of content management or its presentation. It is
reported that the most powerful search engines are also able to retrieve only 20%
of relevant information from what is available on the web due to lack of organized
data and failure to express the inter relationship of ideas.
. Figure 2 presents a structure of ontology which can show flexible relationship
as semantic net.

Wotan

Fig. 2: An annotated Ontology. Source: http://ontolog.cim3net/file work/

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10.1 Benefits
"* Creation of ontologies for specific subject domains will be a simple,
inexpensive and time saving tool for both organizing as well as for
retrieving information in the web based environment. It will be useful for
content management.
"* Libraries can create simple ontologies based on individual library
collection in such subjects where there is a fusion e.g. Biometrics or where
no.direct class number is available
"* It can standardize vocabulary for a specific subject domain by defining
concepts and their relationship.
"* ontology based search techniques can provide better retrieval with
precision
11 CONCLUDING REMARKS
Ontology is an aid to classification and can integrate the data for fine tuning of
the internet based queries and the search results. There is scope for exploring new
avenues of research since it is yet at a basic stage vis a vis library and information
systems and services. Ontologies by nature are flexible offering scope for further
development. Quoting Albert Einstein would not be out of place here,"Know
where to find information and use it, that is the secret of success".
The author is thankful to Dr. Sangeeta Deokattey and Amruta Gokhale for
their assistance in developing this article.
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