We foresee that ontologies for interoperability are likely organized by a loosely linked network. In the case of digital libraries, the network is realized by a federation of ontologies where cross-links are made on demand. For the future, we plan to work on two extensions. The first one is to develop a new paradigm for synchronization of ontologies, called imitation. The second one is about publishing existing information sources by an ontology that is scalable in its size. Local parts of the ontology can be extended by global parts, which provide more meaning to the concepts. Finally, we are continuing our research on reverse engineering for integrating legacy components.
Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers, Manfred A. Jeusfeld, Hans W