Towards personalization in digital libraries through ontologies

Purpose - To describe a browsing and searching personalization system for digital libraries based on the use of ontologies for describing the relationships between all the elements which take part in a digital library scenario of use. Design/methodology/approach - Identification of all the desired functionalities and requirements that are necessary to fully integrate the use of a digital library in an e-learning environment, and the basic elements that are used to build the ontology that describes such scenario. Findings - The elements that determine the functionalities of the desired personalization system: first, the user's profile, including navigational history and user preferences; and second, the information collected from the navigational behavior of the digital library users. Research limitations/implications - The ontology is not complete. In fact, the ontology in itself will evolve with the new apparition of desired functionalities and requirements of the personalization system. Practical implications - Such a personalization system will be very helpful to the users of a digital library to improve their experience of use. Originality/value - The use of ontologies promotes the integration of new services into existing ones, and the interoperability with other systems through the appropriate semantic web services. New system functionalities and requirements can be added by including the appropriate description into the ontology framework that defines the digital library scenario of use.