Analysis of Semantic Technologies for Ethiopic Church Manuscript, Art and Music
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Information seeking, gathering and processing has become the sixth sense of individuals,
organizations, consortia and nations. Today, information is represented and accessed in
myriad forms across range of domain areas and cultural horizons. For most, the World
Wide Web (WWW) is considered as a single and indispensable source of information.
Currently, keyword-based search engines allow sifting through loads of information in
WWW so as to arrive at relevant query results. However, substantial amount of irrelevant
query results chiefly due to blind information representation scheme to culture,
specialized domain of interest, and natural language datasets sees through the birth
semantic web. Semantic web advocates exploiting conceptual hierarchies, relationships
defined within and associated logical axioms for a more focused set of query results. It
employs ontologies for expediting the knowledge representation endeavor in this respect.
Various studies conducted in the context of semantic web show that variations in
spectrum of culture and domain of interest affect the way information is represented and
accessed. In the same vein, it has been noted that devising and formalizing ontology for
capturing the extremities of knowledge confined in such avenues is an exalted challenge.
To this end, we have chosen Ethiopic Church Manuscript, Art and Music domain area so
as to investigate and analyze issues surrounding the representation of Ethiopic concepts
within the context of semantic web. Salient ontologies namely- manuscript, art, music,
feast, time, date and number ontologies- are abstracted after careful scrutiny of related
ontologies and usage of suitable ontology development methodology. Acquisition and
digitization of representative data samples for classes of concepts and provision of a
model for storage and retrieval of information related to the domain of interest, is also
entertained. Furthermore, an experiment for evaluation of ontologies abstracted and
model proposed is conducted by implementing a form-based semantic search engine and
comparison of query results with that of keyword-based search engines. Initial results
shows that the devised ontologies aloft the searching process in the domain area as well
as unveil set aside issues, specific to Ethiopic concepts within the context of semantic
web.
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Keywords
Information Seeking, Gathering and Processing