Vocabulary Integration Reexamined

Abstract

Several thesauri have been published in various domains, or in the same subject domain. This heterogeneity caused the significant incompatibility of transferring or sharing data among different systems and databases. Therefore, thesaurus integration is a solution for handling this incompatibility issue. To achieve interoperability between different thesauri, mapping systems have been developed for establishing equivalents between terms in different thesauri. However, there is still ambiguity in term semantics and hierarchical relations used in thesauri. The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the issues and challenges in vocabulary mapping and integration between different controlled vocabulary systems. The paper outlines the history of the study of vocabulary mapping efforts and suggests a way in which the emerging practices on semantic issues and mapping problems can be articulated.

Keywords

• vocabulary mapping
• controlled vocabulary
• thesaurus
• interoperability
• ontologies