6 Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology—April/May 2003

Special Section

O ur dependence on World Wide Web (Web) technology forinformation, communication and services grows daily.

Consider the slightly frantic behaviors people often exhibitwhen they are unable to access the Web for an extended periodof time. Of course there is the other side – a break from inter-acting with a computer is viewed as a relief for the eyes. Evenso, it is clear that our information society is becoming wedded

Jane Greenberg is an assistant professor in the School of Informationand Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,principal investigator of the Metadata Generation Research project(http://ils.unc.edu/~janeg) and program committee co-chair of the2003 Dublin Core Conference. |She can be reached by e-mail atjaneg@ils.unc.edu

by Jane Greenberg, Guest Editor

IntroductionThe Semantic Web: More than a Vision

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April/May 2003—Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 7

Special Section

to Web technology for daily activities. The proliferation oflibrary and information science publications addressing andresearching aspects of the Web – still a relatively new phe-nomenon – provides even further evidence of our dependenceon this technology. In fact it’s difficult, if not impossible, to findan information science periodical without one article dealingwith Web technology.

While all this is exciting, there are many limitations to thecurrent Web. Visionaries and researchers throughout time havetalked about exploiting our mass of information to automat-ically produce new knowledge, build intelligent systems andeliminate human burdens associated with information seek-ing and problem solving activities. There have been successes,but they are often limited by domain or infrastructure. TheWeb offers us a new play-ing field for addressingthese goals through theSemantic Web, which is anextension aiming to fostercommunication betweencomputers and people viasemantically encoded infor-mation.

This special sectionincludes four articles aboutthe Semantic Web. A greatdeal of the Semantic Webactivity is taking place at theWorld Wide Web Consor-tium (W3C). In this reviewof the field, Eric Miller andRalph Swick provide anoverview of W3C SemanticWeb activities. They discussSemantic Web enablingtechnologies and importantSemantic Web AdvanceDevelopment (SWAD) ini-tiatives. These include SWADDAML, SWAD-Europe, SWAD Simile and SWAD Oxygen.

Bijan Parsia focuses on Semantic Web services (remoteprograms). Parsia outlines the shortcomings of the currentWeb, explaining why current services are severely limited andhow they could be improved. Attention is specifically givento the problems of service discovery. Parsia explains currentefforts to solve this problem with Universal Description,Discovery and Integration of Web Services (UDDI) and

demonstrates the significant role of semantics in problem solv-ing. This article draws from work currently being conductedin MIND’s Semantic Web Agents Project at the University ofMaryland, College Park.

Jane Greenberg, Stuart Sutton and D. Grant Campbelladdress the fundamental role that metadata plays in buildingthe Semantic Web. We discuss the vision and architectureunderlying the Semantic Web and explain how each layer ofthe Semantic Web’s architecture, as envisioned by TimBerners-Lee, is connected to or directly involves metadata.Topics include metadata vocabularies, enabling technologiesand Semantic Web authoring and annotation. We find our-selves, in some respects, as early pioneers exploring the poten-tial roles and forms of metadata related to the Semantic Web’s

emerging architecture.Elin Jacob’s article con-

cludes this special sectionwith an article on ontolo-gies. Jacob offers a philo-sophical and practical dis-cussion of ontologies andtheir roles in building theSemantic Web. Specificattention is given to ontol-ogy languages, such asRDFS (Resource Descrip-tion Framework Schemas)and OWL (Web OntologyLanguage) and their appli-cation to the Semantic Web.Jacob urges us to think out-side the box and realize thatthere are indeed new capa-bilities that we need toexplore.

To pick up on Jacob’sremarks, I have heard peo-ple say the Semantic Web is“old wine in a new bottle.”

There is likely some truth here, as is always the case withinnovations drawing upon developments and ideas from ear-lier times, but I agree with Jacob’s line of thinking. The tech-nology underlying the Web is unprecedented and affords usnew opportunities to turn segments of the growing mass ofelectronic information into new intelligence for both humansand computers. The Semantic Web is an engaging territory toexplore and cultivate.

The technology underlying

the Web is unprecedented

and affords us new oppor-

tunities to turn segments

of the growing mass of

electronic information into

new intelligence for both

humans and computers.