Thesaurus construction through knowledge representation

Semantic metadata describing subject content plays a vital role in supporting indexing and retrieval in Digital Libraries. Mechanisms used to deliver this metadata include keyword collections, thesauri and classifications. Constructing a large thesaurus, however, is a difficult process which can be facilitated through the application of knowledge representation techniques developed for managing and reasoning about concepts. We describe such a scheme - a Description Logic (DL) - and show through an example how a DL can play a part in the classification construction process, aiding in the production of coherent hierarchies and ensuring that the relationships represented in a thesaurus are sensible.