A framework to the development of Islamic ontology: Symbiosis of thesaurus and domain expert in ontology development

Abstract

This paper discusses the conceptual and vocabulary problems users faced when searching the web. It will show how a well structured thesaurus can be used as knowledge base for an interface that can assist user with search topic clarification. The first part of the paper covers thesaurus structure needed to support these functions. Several thesaurus samples are presented to illustrate these principles. Thesauri contain structured vocabularies that provide knowledge based support for end user searching. However, if we want to create a knowledge-rich description of for example an (image of an) art object, medical, business, crime etc. such as required by the “semantic web”, thesauri turn out to provide only part of the knowledge needed. The aim of this research is to explore how ontology and semantic web technology be applied as solutions to problems in retrieving Islamic resources. This research emphasizes on semantic web technologies and the development of ontology using symbiotic approach involving thesaurus and other reference sources as the basis for implementing novel mechanism for retrieving Islamic web in 3 different languages simultaneously. In this research, existing knowledge sources such as documents, reports, etc. are mapped into the domain ontology and semantically enriched. As a result, we developed a framework for the development of Islamic ontology that advocates the symbiosis of thesaurus and domain expert. This semantically enriched information enables better knowledge indexing and searching process, not only improve precision but also search time and implicitly a better management of knowledge.