Semantic annotation of environmental resources: Does it really matter to resource users?

Semantic annotation of environmental resources has become a reality attested by a significant amount of annotations created and published on the Web recently. A key question now is how to make practical and effective use of those annotations to aid users of environmental resources perform their activities more efficiently and effectively. In this paper we present and discuss results of an expert evaluation, which tried to address some aspects of this relatively complex question. The evaluation was conducted on the example of the TaToo semantic annotation and discovery approach. The overall results showed a positive attitude towards the usefulness of the semantic annotations and their potential to improve not only the discovery of environmental resources, but various aspects of their usage.