discovering resources on a network can be a difficult task. In this paper, we describe an approach to a metadata service model and the notion of ontology for topic-specialized resource discovery. The metadata model is based on the Warwick Framework and implemented in a class-based object-oriented fashion. This model allows a resource to have individual metadata sets that are most suitable for representign the resource in a structured way. Such a model enables new metadata sets to be included without requirng changes to existign sets. Additionally, the metadata service classifies the metadata according to topic or community-specific taxonomies and searches these taxonomies based on specific user queries. The ontology ensures the semantic consistency of these taxonomies and queries. The merging of ontology with the metadata service facilitates resource discovery and information sharing on the distributed networks.
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