Describes Finland's national effort at building an ontology service, describes the linked ontology approach as well as musings on the difficulties of developing multilingual ontologies.

1. Building a National Ontology
Infrastructure
Matias Frosterus, Mirja Anttila,
Mikko Lappalainen, Susanna Nykyri,
Tuomas Palonen, Sini Pessala
SWIB 2013
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

2. This presentation
 Overview of the ONKI project
 Linked ontology approach
 Trilingual ontology
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

3. ONKI project
 A joint project of the National Library of Finland, the Ministry of
Finance and the Ministry of Education and Culture
 The aim is to build a reliable, centralized, national ontology
service named Finto
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

4. ONKI project
 What does the ONKI project offer?




Publication of ontologies
Using ontologies in applications through various interfaces
The development of the General Finnish Upper Ontology YSO
Coordination of ontology work on national scale
 Improving interoperability across the spectrum by harmonizing
annotations
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

5. ONKI project
 Based on the FinnONTO research project, which ran in Aalto
University and the University of Helsinki 2003-2012
 Focus on light-weight SKOS ontologies intended for
annotations
 Powered by ONKI Light
 Open source
 https://code.google.com/p/onki-light/
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

6. Finto ontology service:
Ontology publication
Guidelines
and support
ONKI
Light
Browsing
Users:
Ontology
developers
General
Upper
Ontology
Interfaces
Annotators
Application
Developers
End
users
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

7. The second part
 Linked ontology approach
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

8. Linked ontology approach
 What we have:
 Silos
 Expert-made thesauri
 A large amount of data and annotations
Thesaurus
Thesaurus
…
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
silo
silo
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

9. Linked ontology approach
 What we want:
 Eliminate the silos
 Harmonize the annotations
Thesaurus
Thesaurus
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

10. Linked ontology approach
 How?
 Ontologies are much easier to link together than thesauri
 Concepts as opposed to terms
 Explicit relations
Ontology
Ontology
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

11. Linked ontology approach
 The problem:
Ontology
Ontology
Ontology
Ontology
Ontology
…
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

12. Linked ontology approach
 The problem:
 A lot of work!
I have
an
update!
Ontology
Ontology
Ontology
Ontology
Ontology
…
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
I must
react!
Me too!
Me too!
Me too!
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

13. Linked ontology approach
 The approach:
 Limit the links between
the ontologies
Domain
Ontology
Domain
Ontology
General Upper
Ontology
Domain
Ontology
Domain
Ontology
Domain
Ontology
…
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

14. Linked ontology approach
 In practice:
KOKO
YSO
JUHO
TERO
LIITO
AFO
MAO
…
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

15. Linked ontology approach: KOKO
Ontology
Domain
Concepts
YSO
General upper ontology
24 800
MAO
Museum artifacts
6 800
MUSO
Music
1 000
TAO
Design
3 000
TERO
Health
6 500
VALO
Photography
2 000
AFO
Agriculture
7 000
JUHO
Government
6 300
KAUNO
Literature
5 000
KTO
Linguistics
900
KITO
Literary research
850
KULO
Cultural research
1 500
LIITO
Economics
3 000
MERO
Seafaring
1 300
PUHO
Military
2 000

16. Challenges to be tackled
 Propagating the changes in the upper general ontology to the
domain ontologies
 Locating the overlapping concepts between the domain
ontologies
 Not always simple
 Labels might be misleading
 Ontological structure can help
 Coordinating the use and development of ontologies on a
national level
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

17. The third part
 Trilingual ontology
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18. Ontology design
 The relations between concepts can be designed in several
ways
 What affects these choices?
 Corpora
 Language
 Culture
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

19. Trilingual ontology
 In practice
 YSO: General Finnish Upper Ontology
 ”Finnish” as a culture
 Finland has two official languages: Finnish and Swedish
 Very different from one another
 Lingua franca: English
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

20. YSO
 Topmost hierarchy is inspired by DOLCE
 Offers the general concepts needed for annotation in many
domains
 Complemented with a number of domain ontologies for
specific use cases
 Based on the General Finnish Thesaurus YSA
 Used and developed for decades in the annotation of all Finnish
non-fiction literature
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

21. Language affects the hierarchy
 Finnish word ’siirto’ means transfer
siirto
skos:broader
maansiirto
hiustensiirto
voimansiirto
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

22. Language affects the hierarchy
 Finnish word ’siirto’ means transfer
transfer
skos:broader
earthmoving
hair transplantation
power
transmission
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

23. Language affects the hierarchy
 Finnish has a single concept for rivers
 Swedish has three
 Älv = Scandinavian river situated north of Göta älv (a specific
river)
 Å = Scandinavian river situated south of Göta älv
 Flod = non-Scandinavian river
 A distinction not used in Finland
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

24. Culture before language
 Looking beyond the language
 Realizing that language does affect the way we perceive the
world
 Building an ontology for a specific cultural sphere
 Key to the harmonization of different annotations in different
domains
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

25. The development of YSO
 Mapping to other ontologies
 Mapping to LCSH is underway
 Building the guidelines for the development
 How to choose the correct approach when language clash leads
to concept clash?
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services

26. Thank you!
matias.frosterus@helsinki.fi
onki-posti@helsinki.fi
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FINLAND – Library Network Services