1. Semantic Web, Ontologies & Co.

In order to implement the vision of the Semantic Web, it is essential to represent knowledge in an exchangeable and processable fashion. In the last years ontologies have become a popular method for this purpose. However, the creation, maintenance and application of ontologies for the support of knowledge management, interoperability issues as well as information retrieval is still very very heterogeneous. Sophisticated ontology languages like RDF, OWL and Topic Maps have been created but are still not used to their full potential. Many questions are still open for discussion, e.g. how to use ontology to support an information search, how to visualize ontologies and what support need a user to create and maintenance ontologies? Over the last years I have addressed some of these issues and with every new concept & prototype I understand better that we are only at the beginning and a long way lays ahead of us.

2. Information Retrieval and Digital Libraries

Knowledge is a treasure and since centuries traditional libraries protected and harvested it very successful. However, in the digital world of today, new technical and social opportunities have emerged, e.g. global collaboration, text search of millions of documents in a mill sec and giant repositories which “could” easily contain all libraries information in one. Obviously, the time is right for a revolution in order to leave the dusty shelves behind and make use of this brave new digital world.

BUT the book is still not dead and traditional libraries are still open. Knowledge is still worldwide scattered, only fragmentarily accessible and does not comply with today's requirements concerning a rapid information retrieval. In fact more knowledge is lost than ever. Digital libraries supposed to be the answer to the information flood. Why have so many digital libraries failed to meet the high expectations? Why are digital libraries still commonly created for isolated collections and why are the necessary tools invented over and over again? In my research I try to develop a better understanding of the challenges of digital libraries and show how ontologies can be helpful for this wicked problem.

Relevant Resources:

• Digital Mechanism and Gear Library (DMG-Lib)
  

3. Knowledge Federation

For centuries the book and the lecture have fragmented our knowledge and confined it to the bookshelf and the classroom. New media technology now allows for a radical change in the way knowledge is created and shared. At the same time, the global conditions are calling for such change. Knowledge federation envisions networks joining humans, digitized resources, data sources and technical tools, within which knowledge is continually tended by all and harvested by all. Federated communication promises to facilitate improvements or breakthroughs in a number areas including:

• Understanding and handling the so-called 'wicked problems' such as the climate change, where a number of points of view and sources of expertise must be combined.
• Handling time-critical tasks where information from diverse sources must be made available.
• Education, where the learning resources can be 'gardened' globally by the people who have knowledge and used by those who need it.
• Scientific production and communication, where largest benefits may be reached by combining knowledge from different sources.

Relevant Resources:

• Knowledge Federation Community WIKI