An information retrieval application using ontologies

Abstract

Searching for information in long videos can be a time-consuming experience. In this paper, we describe OnAIR, an ontology-aided information retrieval system applied to retrieve clips from video collections. We used a video collection compiled from interviews with Ana Teixeira, a Brazilian artist. The interviews were made by Paula P. Braga, the domain expert. The interview is developed in the domain of contemporary art and the system uses a domain ontology to expand the queries with related terms. We tested the system with a battery of queries, and we veri.ed that the ontology contributes to the e.ciency improvement in terms of the relevance of retrieved documents. We designed the system to work in a domain-independent way, allowing us to move to other domains by just changing the underlying ontologies and video collections.