Extending the VIVO Ontology to iSchools: Enabling Networking of Information Scientists 1

VIVO, funded by NIH, utilizes Semantic Web technologies to model scientists and provides federated search to enhance the discovery of researchers and collaborators across disciplines and organizations. VIVO ontology is designed with the focus on modeling scientists, publications, resources, grants, locations, and services. VIVO data is annotated based on the VIVO ontology to semantically represent and integrate information about faculty research, teaching, and service. This paper introduces the birth and development of the VIVO ontology, and discusses the potential of expending it to the information science community to facilitate networking of information scientists.