Semantic Layering with Magpie

Browsing the web involves two main tasks: finding the right web page and then making sense of its content. A significant amount of research has gone into supporting the task of finding web resources through ‘standard’ information retrieval mechanisms, or semantics-enhanced search. Much less attention has been paid to the second problem. In this paper we describe Magpie, a tool which supports the interpretation of web pages. Magpie acts as a complementary knowledge source, which a reader can call upon to quickly gain access to any background knowledge relevant to a web resource. Magpie works by automatically associating an ontology based semantic layer to web resources, allowing relevant services to be directly invoked within a standard web browser. The functionality of Magpie is illustrated using examples of how it has been integrated with our lab’s web resources.

Publication(s)

An amended version of this report will appear as a chapter in the book on 'Ontologies in Information Systems' authored by Rudi Studer and Steffen Staab to be published by Springer Verlag soon.