An Ontology-Based Subject Searching Framework for Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC)

In this paper, we present a conceptual searching framework based on ontology to help users in query formation and make subject searching more effective in online public access catalogue (OPAC). The study proposes an ontology-based GUI through which users can visualize subject headings and interact with the GUI through a semantic-based process while searching. This model represents the library of Congress subject headings (LCSHs) in an ontological form which exposes the hierarchy of the subject headings as well as all stated relations among them. It facilitates context-based searching by replacing the keyword-based search and help users to formulate their query in such a format that, it will be more responsive for information retrieval.