Increasingly, effort has been devoted to surveying ontology-related research studies from various aspects. However, no survey is available for the ontology library system. For this reason, we decided to examine existing library systems in this paper. First, we identified the main criteria (management, adaptation, and standardization) for evaluating the functionality of the library systems. Then, based on the further enriched criteria, we surveyed most existing ontology library systems. Finally, we summarized the comparison and proposed various important requirements for structuring ontology library systems. The ontology library systems surveyed include: WebOnto, Ontolingua, DAML Ontology Library System, SHOE, Ontology Server, IEEE Standard Upper Ontology, OntoServer and ONIONS. 1.

Legal ontologies are useful in the design of knowledge systems because they are reusable. A library of such ontologies could greatly enhance the development of legal knowledge systems. In this article we address the creation of such a library. In particular, we discuss four legal ontologies and investigate how the ontologies can be indexed and represented in a library. 1. Introduction What are the building blocks of legal knowledge? Legal philosophers have pondered over this question for a long time. Research in Artificial Intelligence and Law has also run up against this question, albeit from a different angle. Arguably, the creation of a legal knowledge representation requires a conceptualisation of the building blocks of legal knowledge. Eventually, these building blocks will form the basis for operational legal knowledge systems. An important reason for producing ontologies is that they form reusable building blocks for the design of (legal) knowledge systems. Many development met...

In this paper, the conceptual frame-based ontology as introduced in Van Kralingen (1995) is described. The backbone of the ontology is constituted by three frame structures. The structures have been coined the norm frame, the act frame and the concept-description frame. A legal-theoretical analysis has determined the form of the structures. In addition to the three frame structures, the ontology comprises some (generic) elements for the instantiation of the structures. 1. Introduction The role and importance of ontologies has in recent years been a recurring topic in discussions on the development of models of the legal (and other) domain(s). An ontology aims at providing building blocks for a (conceptual) model. To be able to fulfil its role, an ontology must provide an abstract, usually simplified view on a domain (a conceptualization). This view comes to expression in the form of the specification of a number of concepts and relations that can be used as primitives for building (co...

In the legal domain, ontologies enjoy quite some reputation as a way to model normative knowledge about laws and jurisprudence. Several methods have been used and are well-known qua ontological methods. However, no previous attempt to construct ontologies based on professional knowledge exists, capturing judicial practical expertise. This paper shows the preliminary ontology development for the second version of the prototype Iuriservice, a web based intelligent FAQ for judicial use, containing a repository of professional judicial knowledge. The iFAQ system will focus on such knowledge and will base on OPLK —Ontology of Professional Legal Knowledge — developed by UAB. Profesional Legal Knowledge refers to the core of professional work that contains the experience of the daily treatment of cases and is unevenly distributed within individuals as a result of their professional and personal experiences. The knowledge acquisition process has been based on an ethnographic process designed by the UAB team and the Spanish School of the Judiciary within the national SEC project, to efficiently obtain useful and representative information from questionnaire-based interviews. Nearly 800 competency questions have been extracted from these interviews and the ontology is being modelled from the selection of relevant terms. Regarding ontology modelling issues, we have followed the DILIGENT argumentation methodology to control the discussion and trace the arguments used in favor or against the introduction of a concept X as part of the domain ontology. This paper presents the preliminary Ontology of Professional Judicial Knowledge (OPJK) that has been extracted manually from the selection of relevant terms from nearly 200 competency questions and affirms that the modelling of this professional judicial knowledge demands the description of this knowledge as it is perceived by the judge and the abandonment of dogmatic legal categorizations. 1.

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