Ontology development for flexible content

Converging media industry calls for tighter integration of creativity, business processes, and technologies. Media companies need flexible methods to manage electronic content production and delivery, and metadata is a key enabler in making this goal a reality. However, metadata is useful only if its nature is understood clearly and its structure and usage are well-defined. For this purpose, an ontology, consisting of conceptual models that map the content domain into a limited set of meaningful concepts, is needed. This paper introduces an ontology development framework rooted at the core business processes of electronic publishing that can be used to define semantic metadata structures for electronic content. The framework underlines the different nature of ontology development and metadata publishing, and how these two processes influence each other. This paper discusses also the application of the ontology development framework in practice. The framework has been created in the SmartPush project, where media companies explore new business opportunities for electronic publishing and delivery.