Hindrances in semantic mapping involving Thesauri and Metadata: A linguistic perspective
Jung‐ran Park · 2002
Optimal success in the organization of heterogeneous networked resources and in the attainment of optimal recall and precision in the harvesting of these resources and exchanging of information depends on how best to deal with the characteristics of natural language in correlation with information technology and with the user's information-seeking behavior. The characteristics of natural languages pose enormous challenges in attaining optimal resource discovery, as well as in exchanging information in the process of semantic mapping involving thesauri and metadata, and in developing multilingual metathesauri. Ambiguity caused by polysemy especially hinders the capacity of semantic mapping, making the implementation of crosswalks for resource exchange potentially chaotic. Therefore, disambiguation of the multiple meanings of polysemous terms is absolutely essential for achieving interoperability involving thesauri and metadata.