Semantic Digital Library Services

To a great extent, ‘Semantics’ depends upon the context in which the user is seeking information. The proposed model aims at delivering information in the light of ontology-based document annotation, user annotation and domain ontology. The present study addresses the problem of semantic interoperability in digital library environment. In a heterogeneous environment, a mediation-based service is of immense help to resolve the ontology-level, schema-level and service-level ambiguity, for which WSMO Framework has been chosen. This study is confined to bring interoperability at schema and ontology level for the domain of agricultural. Further studies can be done for service level interoperability among various digital library services. INTRODUCTION The faster and meaningful information retrieval has been the driving aim for the information retrieval systems since the beginning of automated information retrieval. During the database information systems, Artificial intelligence, and other computer-aided retrieval systems have made a very optimistic start. In the Internet era, Semantic Web came as a model of semantic retrieval in the web environment. Traditional libraries are in a stage of transition towards making the library without boundary with global access with Internet. Many information storage and retrieval systems were been used for a meaningful retrieval in print-based libraries. In a Web environment, the traditional means and techniques for information storage and retrieval are required to be modified to suite the changed needs. The classification systems for book classification has been changed into Ontologies to represent domain knowledge in machine processable form; the cataloguing codes have taken shape of Metadata Schema for the description web resources. The model of Semantic Web goes further to inferencing and proofing which is essential for information retrieval in web environment. With all these components (XML, RDF, Ontology, Inferencing, proofing, etc) [1], the vision of meaningful retrieval on Web seems quite practical. Still the following two core aspects has to be looked into for getting meaningful retrieval: • User’s context; and • Document context The vision of semantic retrieval can be accomplished with an ontological model of user’s interest areas, and the modeling of context of information which has been dealt in the document. This will make the match of user’s context with the document context easier at the search stage. Due to the distributed and heterogeneous nature of the Web, interoperability at semantic level became a great challenge before the system developer. Hence the present study aims at addressing both the challenges using tools and technology available to implement Semantic