Athens University of Economics and Business Department of Informatics MSc

The increasing adoption of the Semantic Web vision has led to the emergence of a distributed knowledge base in the form of interconnected ontologies. In the context of cultural heritage in particular, digital museums that use Semantic Web standards and technologies, hereafter called Semantic Web museums, have been proposed. Current Semantic Web museums, however, support mostly static exhibitions, meaning exhibitions based on static narrative structures. By contrast, this thesis proposes a new kind of Semantic Web museum that also supports dynamic exhibitions, meaning exhibitions based on narrative structures that change dynamically during to the user's interaction. Apart from Semantic Web technologies, the proposals of this thesis are based on ideas from narrative theories and interactive storytelling systems. More specifically, the thesis proposes a theoretical framework for building Semantic Web museums, which provides facilities of increasing complexity, including presentation schemata, transitions between presentation schemata, and narrative functions. An experimental prototype of the proposed framework was also implemented during the thesis, and it was used to demonstrate how the framework supports the creation of Semantic Web museums with different types of end-user interaction. Chapter 2 presents background concepts from traditional and digital museums. A number of desired characteristics for Semantic Web museum are also identified. Finally, an overview of the framework of this thesis is given. Chapter 3 presents some background concepts from narrative theory and interactive storytelling systems, also discussing their roles in museum exhibitions. Chapter 4 discusses the knowledge representation structures used by the framework of this thesis, also explaining their purpose during the authoring of a new exhibition and when visitors interact with an exhibition. Chapter 5 explains how the knowledge representation structures of the previous chapter can be combined, resulting in different kinds of exhibitions. It also explains how the exhibition manager, the heart of the proposed framework, uses the knowledge representation structures, and how it interacts with visitors. Chapter 6 discusses the experimental prototype, which implements the framework of this thesis, and the trials that were conducted using the prototype. The invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 revolutionized the use of the Internet. From a network of networks for experts and researchers, the Internet became a global web of data, published by anybody and consumed by anybody. The rapid growth of the World Wide Web made the use of search engines mandatory. The vast majority of the Web's information, however, is in …