Beyond Auto Categorization: Next Steps

Dictionaries, thesauri, taxonomies and automatic categories have been part of document management systems for quite some time. Recently, tagging, folkonomies and ontologies are emerging as new ways to capture social and domain knowledge. Furthermore, using the emerging Semantic Web standards such as RDF and OWL, and technologies for automatic metadata extraction (annotation) and semantic analysis, have provided alternative or newer ways to organize, integrate and exploit (search, analyze and perform knowledge discovery) information within enterprise and on the Web.

We will provide an overview of current state of the art and share some personal experiences that may answer the following questions

• what types of ontologies have been built, how they are built, is there a typical ontology, low large a typical ontology is, what does it take to build and maintain ontologies
• how well (semantic) metadata annotation/extraction work
• what is the status and adoption of Semantic Web standards and technologies
• what kind of advanced capabilities (analytical, decision making and discovery) are made possible using Semantic Web technologies
• which domains have been more amenable to applications of ontologies and Semantic Web technologies, and what are few use cases?

Most of the discussion will be through the use of real-world examples/applications.

Additional material can be found in a more detailed tutorial at: http://www2007.org/tutorial-T11.php and in additional material at http://knoesis.wright.edu