Tutorial 7B: Thesauri and ontologies in digital libraries Part II. Design, evaluation, and development
Half day

This tutorial will introduce criteria for the design and evaluation of thesauri and ontologies and then deal with methods and tools for their development: Locating sources; collecting concepts, terms. and relationships to reuse existing knowledge; developing and refining thesaurus/ontology structure; software, database structure and Web standards; collaborative development; developing crosswalks / mappings between thesauri/ontologies. In summing up, the tutorial will address the question of the resources needed to develop and maintain a thesaurus or ontology. See also morning tutorial Thesauri and ontologies in digital libraries Part I. Structure and use in knowledge-based assistance to users.

Target Audience:
This tutorial is intended for people who have a basic familiarity with the function and structure of thesauri and ontologies (such as acquired in Part 1).

Level of experience required:
Introductory

Presenter:
Dagobert Soergel holds an MS equivalent in mathematics and physics (1964) and a PhD in political science (1970), both from the University of Freiburg, Germany. He is Professor of Information Studies, University of Maryland, where he teaches courses in information retrieval, thesaurus development, expert systems, and information technology, and an information systems consultant. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Western Ontario, Chicago, and Konstanz, Germany. Among other books, he has authored Organizing Information (1985), which received the American Society of Information Science Best Book Award, Indexing Languages and Thesauri. Construction and Maintenance (1974) and numerous papers. He has designed several thesauri, most recently the Alcohol and Other Drug Thesaurus http://etoh.niaaa.nih.gov/AODVol1/Aodthome.htm (for which he chaired the advisory committee) and the Harvard Business Thesaurus (under development). He is developing TermMaster, a thesaurus management software package. In 1997 he received the American Society of Information Science Award of Merit.