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Thesaurus federations: Loosely integrated thesauri for document retrieval in networks based on internet technologies.

Year:
1997

Authors/Eds.:
Ralf Kramer, Ralf Nikolai, and Corinna Habeck.

Type of publication:
book

Source:
International Journal On Digital Library, Special Issue on Metadata for Digital Libraries, 1(2):122 - 129, September 1997.

URL:
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00799/tocs/t7001002.htm

Abstract:
As a result of the distribution of interrelated information over several different information systems, the interconnection of information systems has increased in recent years. However, a purely technical interconnection is insufficient for the users who need to find their way to information they are looking for. Thesauri have been a proven means to identify documents, e.g., books of interest in a library. For different domains, different thesauri are available, which, of course, can be used in information systems as well, e.g., for the indexing and retrieval of data objects. Thus, the interconnection of information systems raises the need to integrate related thesauri. Furthermore, most recent advances in open interoperability technologies (World-Wide Web, CORBA, and Java) offer the potential for completely new technical solutions for employing thesauri. This paper presents an approach for integrating multiple thesaurus databases. It concentrates on the integration of distributed and heterogeneous thesaurus databases and the integration of multilingual and monolingual thesauri. The designed software architecture takes advantage of the most advanced Internet and CORBA technology that is currently available in public domain and in commercial implementations.

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