1. Ontology and Ontology Libraries: a
Critical Study

2. Outline
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Introduction and Overview
Languages for expressing Ontologies
Tools for building Ontologies
Ontology Libraries
Evaluation criteria
Transitions to the future

3. What is Ontology?
• The term "ontology" can be defined as
an explicit specification of conceptualization.
1. Ontology is a term in philosophy and its meaning is ``theory
of existence''.
2. Ontology is a body of knowledge describing some domain.

4. Ontology-Definition
Ontologies to capture human knowledge based on common sense.
- Lenat y Guha (1990)
Source: http://www.emiliosanfilippo.it/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Ontology-3.jpg

5. How are Ontologies currently being used to Librarians?
• Standardize vocabulary.
• Provide better routes.
• Provide better search.
Source: http://gonereading.com/newshop/wpcontent/uploads/2012/01/Librarian-Gift-446x446.png

6. Languages for Expressing Ontologies

7. Tools for Building ontology
• The are many Ontology tools are available in the
present times such as Protégé, OntoEdit, Ontolingua,
OilEd, pOWL etc.
Source: http://www.colourbox.com/preview/2456889-245207-three-3d-people-with-the-tools-in-the-hands-of.jpg

8. Protégé
• Free, open source
• Web client and format
• Strong community
Source: http://www.racer-systems.com/img//logo/protege.gif

9. Ontology built using Protégé
Source: http://protege-ontology-editor-knowledge-acquisition-system.136.n4.nabble.com/attachment/4658809/2/jbddhbbc.png

10. What is Ontology Libraries (OL)?
 Ontology libraries are the systems that collect ontologies from
different sources and facilitate the tasks of finding, exploring, and
using these ontologies.
Source: http://semanticweb.com/files/2013/09/9685321345_afc5296f95.jpg

11. Need for ontology libraries
• Enables and facilitates interoperability
• Well-established and well-tested ontologies
• Integrates the data much more easily
(Contd.)

12. Need for ontology libraries
• Find and determine the domain
• Ontology in specific format
• Publish their ontology

13. Characteristics of ontology libraries

14. Purpose and Coverage
 What is it for?
-Domain
-Intended scope

15. Library content
 What is in it?
-Ontology and how they are collected
-Gatekeeping
-Mappings and other inter-ontology relations
-Metadata

16. Main function for users
 What does it let you do?
-Finding, Search and evaluating ontologies
-Browsing
-Programmatic access

17. Other features
 What else is there?
-Versioning
-Reasoning
-User management
-Notifications

18. What OL offers!!
Ontology library systems offer functions for
managing, adapting and standardizing groups of
ontologies, for indexing content with ontologies, and
for utilizing ontologies in applications.
Source: http://assets.fiercemarkets.com/public/newsletter/fiercehealthit/telehealth4.jpg

19. Structure of Ontology Library Systems
Source: http://origin-ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0169023X02000411-gr4.jpg

20. Lists of Ontology libraries
Domain
• BioPortal
• OBO Foundry
• OLS
• oeGov
General
• Cupboard
• ODP
• OntoSelect
• OntoSearch2
• Schema-Cache
• TONES
• SHOE
Mixed
• ONKI
• COLOR
• Ontohub
• WebOnto
• DAML
• IEEE Standard
Upper Ontology
(SUO)
• MMI
• SHOE

21. Ontology Libraries-Domain
• Biomedical
- BioPortal
- OBO (Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies )
Foundry
- OLS (Ontology Lookup Service).
• e-Government
- oeGov (Ontologies for e-Government)

23. Ontology Libraries-General
- Cupboard
- ODP(Ontology Design Pattern)
- OntoSelect
- OntoSearch2
- TONES(Thinking ONtologiES)
- Schema-Cache

25. Ontology Libraries-Mixed
• ONKI Ontology Server
• COLOR (Common Logic Ontology Repository)
• Ontohub
• WebOnto
• DAML Ontology library system
• IEEE-SUO (Standard Upper Ontology)
• MMI-ORR (Marine Metadata InteroperabilityOntology Registry and Repository )
• SHOE (Simple HTML Ontology Extensions)

27. BioPortal- Biomedical
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Browse, search and visualize ontologies.
Multiple formats support
Add notes
Add review
NCBO annotator
NCBO Resource Index
Source: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OOR/OOR-Logo/OOR-Logo-candidates/BioPortal-1.jpg

28. Where can I access the BioPortal?

29. oeGov- e-Government
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Distributed creation and maintenance of information
RDF/OWL formats
Semantics and controlled vocabularies
Schemas and several datasets
Blog system and review
Source: http://oegov.org/images/oegov_logo.jpg

30. Where can I access the oeGOV Ontologies?

31. TONES-General
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Browsing ontology
Empirical studies
RDF/XML format
Collection of OWL ontologies
Source: http://webont.org/owled/2007/TonesLogo.png

32. Where can I access the TONES?

33. SHOE-Mixed
• Management
- Storage
- Versioning
• Adaptation
- Searching
• Standardization
- Language
- Upper-level ontology
Source: http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE/SHOEtitle.gif

34. Where can I access the SHOE?

35. Evaluation Criteria
1. Domain
2. Number of ontologies
3. Dynamics
4. Search metadata
5. Search within ontology
6. Browsing ontologies
7. Architecture
8. Components
9. Collection
10. Gatekeeping
11. Search across ontologies
12. Metrics
13. Comments and reviews
14.Ranking
15. Navigation criteria
16. SPARQL endpoint
17. Content available
18. Read or write
19. Intended use
20. Storage
21. Web service access
22. Accepted formats

36. BioPortal
Cupboard
OBO
Foundry
oeGov
OLS
ODP
SchemaCache
Biomedical
General
Biomedical
e-Govt.
Biomedical
General
General
No. of
ontologies
270
150
86
31
79
125
157
Dynamics
Growing
Growing
Stable
Growing
Stable
Growing
Stable
Search
metadata
Yes
Yes
Yes
Blog-based
No
Wiki-based
No
Search
within
ontology
Yes, with
autocomple
te
Advanced
search
No
No
Yes, terms
and terms
IDs
No
Keywordbased
Browsing
ontologies
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
Compone
nts
Protégé,
LexGrid
Watson
Sourceforge
Wordpress
OBO API
MediaWiki
Talis
platform
Architectu
re
Single
server
REST-based
communicat
ion
CVS-based
Single
server
Single
server
Single
server
Cloudbased
OL
Features
Domain

38. Transitions to the future
 Challenges and opportunities for an ontology
developer
-Role of an ontology libraries in massive adoption
and reuse.
-Community service as provided by ontology libraies
through appropriate endorsements.
(contd.)

39. Transitions to the future
 Challenges and opportunities for an ontology
user
- Important for ontologies to be validated by a given
community
- An Ontologies be considered to one particular
domain, one particular format

40. References
1. Mathieu, d’Aquin, F. Noy, Natalya (2012). Where to publish and find
ontologies? A survey of ontology libraries. Web Semantics:
Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web, 11, 96–111
2. http://obitko.com/tutorials/ontologies-semantic-web/ontologies.html
3. Curras, E (2010), Ontologies, Taxonomies and Thesauri in system science
and systematics. Great Abinton, CB: Woodhead Publishing.
4. King, Brandy . E , Reinold, Kathy (2008). Finding the concept, not just
the word: a librarian’s guide to ontologies and semantics. Witney, OX:
Chandos Publishing.
5. Bechhofer, S. Goble, C and Horrocks, I (2002). Requirements of
Ontology Languages. IST Project IST-2000-29243 OntoWeb.
6. http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.h.shaw/teaching/ais/lectures/patricia/ais13-rdfs.pdf

41. References (Contd.)
7. Heflin, J , an introduction to the owl web ontology language
8. http://protege.stanford.edu/
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_Libraries_(computer_science)
10.http://protege.stanford.edu/publications/ontology_development/ontolog
y101-noy-mcguinness.html
11. Y. Ding, D. Fensel, Ontology library systems. The key to successful
ontology reuse, in: First Semantic Web Working Symposium, Stanford
University, 2001, pp. 93–112.
12. http://rpc295.cs.man.ac.uk:8080/repository/
13. http://semanticweb.com/oegov-open-government-through-semanticweb-technologies_b13990
14. http://oegov.org/

42. Thank You