Ontological techniques for reuse and sharing knowledge in digital museums

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to describe a framework of ontological techniques to restrengthen current content management systems of a natural science museum. The ontological approach is utilized to extend the service level from information to knowledge. Design/methodology/approach - Two ontologies have been established to perform vascular plant and herbal drug knowledge bases that further facilitate knowledge integration and inference. Furthermore, this study presented ontology development processes, including knowledge acquisition, representation, and retrieval. Findings - Empirical lessons related to development techniques are concluded as follows: first, the formal concept analysis can be used as a knowledge acquisition approach to acquire concepts and attributes from expertise. Second, the Ontology Web Language represents an XML-based language which provides formal logic expressions for describing knowledge concepts. Finally, the Jena APIs can be further developed as an ontology reasoner to facilitate knowledge inference and retrieval. Research limitations/implications - The development of ontological knowledge base is time-consuming and requires seamless collaboration among specialists, knowledge engineers, and information systems. Practical implications - Empirical lessons indicate that ontological techniques provide potential approaches for library and museum communities to apply for next generation knowledge building. Originality/value - This study indicates that ontological techniques have excellent potential for knowledge building.