Modeling Chinese Ancient Book Catalog

Chinese ancient book catalogs are a unique type of Chinese ancient books, which are essential resources for Chinese humanities research. They are distinguished by their systematic arrangement and provision of organization, classification, review, and generalization of ancient books. However, the lack of knowledge bases that support the discovery and representation of knowledge interrelationships poses a significant challenge for utilizing these catalogs. Identifying, extracting, standardizing, and analyzing the entities and relationships in Chinese ancient book catalogs remains difficult. Ontology can serve as a potent tool for facilitating knowledge discovery and representation, addressing the organization of catalog resources in the digital environment. This paper develops the CABC ontology, which aims to formally represent the concepts present in Chinese ancient book catalogs. By drawing on academic tradition and research needs in this area, the CABC ontology offers a reference conceptual model and opens new avenues for comprehending Chinese ancient books, thereby expanding the application scope of traditional Chinese ancient book catalogs. This study provides a powerful tool for knowledge organization and retrieval, empowering scholars to explore and analyze knowledge interrelationships in Chinese ancient culture, humanities, and history with greater ease.