In our research we investigate to what extent explicit semantics can be used to support end users with the exploration of large heterogeneous collections. In particular we consider cultural heritage, a knowledge-rich domain in which collections are typically described by multiple thesauri. We focus on three types of end user functionality.


First, searching for terms within multiple thesauri to support manual annotation. Second, keyword search, as it has become the de-facto standard to access data on the web. Third, faceted browsing as it has become a popular method to interactively explore (image) collections.


For these three tasks we question the role of explicit semantics in the search algorithm, the result organization and visualization and how to evaluate the added value of for end users. We investigate these questions by the implementation and evaluation of prototype systems on top of large and real wold data collections.

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