Hermeneus: An Architecture for an Ontology-Enabled Information Retrieval

improve IR systems regarding its retriev al and presentation of information, which make the task of finding information more effective, efficient, and interact ive. In this paper we argue that ontologies also greatly improve the e ngineering of such systems. We created a framework that uses ontology to drive the process of engineering an IR system. We develop ed a prototype that shows how a domain specialist withou t knowledge in the IR field can build an IR system with interac tive components. The resulting system provides support for users not only to find their information needs but also to ex tend their state of knowledge. This way, our approach to ontology-enabled information retrieval addresses both the engineerin g aspect described here and also the usability aspect descri bed elsewhere.