A conceptual annotation approach to indexing in a Web-based information system

WWW objects are characterized by data with heterogeneous characteristics such as text, images, both still and moving, graphs and sound. One of the most important problems in this context is to represent and query the content of WWW objects. All the specialists have agreed that the possibility of adding to multimedia WWW objects some sort of conceptual annotations describing their information content would greatly contribute to solve the problem of their intelligent indexing and retrieval. In this paper, we propose to associate with the WWW objects not the final conceptual annotation, but a simple Natural Language (NL) caption, in the form of short texts representing a general, neutral description of their informational content. The NL caption is then converted into a conceptual annotation in NKRL (Narrative Knowledge Representation Language) [35,36], making use of a semi-automatic translation system like those we have implemented in the context of recent European projects.