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"SemanticWebVision" is a future where

May 27, 2020


Library and Information Science Questions Answers Quizzes (LIS Quiz)



QUESTION

Choose ALL that apply

"SemanticWebVision" is a future where
OPTIONS

(a) Web information has exact meaning

(b) Computers can integrate information from the web

(c) Web information can be understood and processed by computers


ANSWER

(a) (b) and (c)




SemanticWebVision" is a future where (a) Web information has exact meaning, (b) Computers can integrate information from the web, and (c) Web information can be understood and processed by computers.






According to the W3C, the Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a place where data can be shared, processed, and understood by automated tools as well as by people.




The Semantic Web

  • "The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation."

- “A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities.”

“The Semantic Web will enable machines to comprehend semantic documents and data, not human speech and writings.”

“The explicit representation of the semantics of data, accompanied with domain theories (that is, ontologies ), will enable a Web that provides a qualitatively new level of service.”

Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila, "The Semantic Web", Scientific American, May 2001, p. 29-37.

The Semantic Web is a collaborative effort led by then World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to provide a framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries.

W3C. What is the Semantic Web? Downloaded February 12, 2014 from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
Traditional Web 

  • A collection of linked documents
    • Data exposed to the Web via HTML, pdf, etc.
    • Connections between data elements are based on human-readable hyperlinks 
    • Queried by text string matching and relevance ranking algorithms


Web 1.0

All the resources we find on the traditional document Web are information resources. There are data posted on Web sites and users simply viewed or downloaded the content. 

Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, coined the term “Web 2.0 In her 1999 article, "Fragmented Future”:

“The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens.”


Web 2.0 and information resources

Everything that lives on the Web is an information resource:

  • Documents
  • Images
  • Audio Files
  • Video Files

Web 2.0 uses HTTP protocol to retrieve information resources

Web 2.0 has greater collaboration among Internet users, content providers and enterprises (Wikis; blogs, social networking sites, etc.)

What Is Web 2.0? [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-web-20/]


Non-information resources and Web 3.0

All “real-world objects” that exist outside of the Web are non-information resources. Examples of non-information resources are:

  • People
  • Places
  • Abstract Concepts
  • Relationships

The Semantic Web (Web 3.0) allows the hyper linking between information resources, non-information resources and the relations between them

All  “real-world objects” that exist outside of the Web are non-information resources (also called 'other resources').

It is important to distinguish, these two types of resources, between the resources found in the current document Web and the real world resources identified in the Linked Data Web.

The Semantic Web uses the HTTP protocol to identify real world, non-information resources and the relationships between resources and non-information resources.

People, places, abstract concepts can be linked to other non-information resources and information resources and the relationships between them.


Semantic Web

  • Web of linked data
    • Information from  single pages can be found via search engines
    • Use the Web like a single global database
    • Allows machines to make logical inferences that have not been explicitly stated by human beings
    • Complex queries over multiple pages/data sources



Traditional Web vs. Semantic Web

Web of Documents (Traditional Web)
  • information resources
  • links  between documents
  • unstructured data
  • implicit semantics
  • for human consumption

Web of Data (Semantic Web)
  • “real-world objects”
  • links between things
  • structured data
  • explicit semantics
  • for machines  and human


Goal of the Sematic Web

  • “The goal of the Semantic Web is to move from a Web of Documents to an open inter-connected Web of Data.”

Bauer, Florian and Kaltenböck, Martin. (2012). Linked Open Data: The Essentials. Downloaded December 30, 2014 from: http://www.reeep.org/LOD-the-Essentials.pdf, p.25.


What enables such Web of Data?

  • Use a set of best practices for publishing and linking structured data on the Web.
  • Use technologies that are more generic, more flexible which make it easier for data consumers to discover and integrate data from large number of data sources and links

Open Linked Data  can be used to do the following:
Provide valuable, agreed-upon information in a standard, open format.

Provide mechanisms to link individual schemas and vocabularies in a way so that people can note if their ideas are “similar” and related, even if they are not exactly  the same. 

Bring all this information to an environment which can be used by most, if not all  of us. (Make data available free of proprietary software, single social networks, or web application.)

Bauer, Florian and Kaltenböck, Martin. (2012). Linked Open Data: The Essentials. Downloaded December 30, 2014 from: http://www.reeep.org/LOD-the-Essentials.pdf, p.25.




Semantic Web

Semantic Web is described in Wikipedia⁵ as below:

The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding of semantics with the data, technologies such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) are used. These technologies are used to formally represent metadata. For example, ontology can describe concepts, relationships between entities, and categories of things. These embedded semantics offer significant advantages such as reasoning over data and operating with heterogeneous data sources.

These standards promote common data formats and exchange protocols on the Web, fundamentally the RDF. According to the W3C, "The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries." The Semantic Web is therefore regarded as an integrator across different content and information applications and systems.

The term [semantic web] was coined by Tim Berners-Lee for a web of data (or data web) that can be processed by machines—that is, one in which much of the meaning is machine-readable. While its critics have questioned its feasibility, proponents argue that applications in library and information science, industry, biology and human sciences research have already proven the validity of the original concept.

Berners-Lee originally expressed his vision of the Semantic Web in 1999 as follows:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A "Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

The 2001 Scientific American article by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila described an expected evolution of the existing Web to a Semantic Web. In 2006, Berners-Lee and colleagues stated that: "This simple idea…remains largely unrealized". In 2013, more than four million Web domains contained Semantic Web markup.





SEE ALSO


REFERENCES

1. Library of Congress, "Semantic Web and Linked Data Quiz," https://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/bibframe/Training/part1a/index.htm (accessed February 11, 2020).

2. Library of Congress, "The Semantic Web and Linked Data Concepts: A Basic Overview," https://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/bibframe/Module1-Part1.pptx (accessed February 11, 2020).

3. Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila, "The Semantic Web", Scientific American, May 2001, p. 29-37.

4. W3C. What is the Semantic Web? Downloaded February 12, 2014 from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

5. Wikipedia, "Semantic Web," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web (accessed May 19, 2020)


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