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Using the NIF Vocabulary Browser

A video tutorial on using the NIF vocabulary browser can be viewed here.

We have implemented an easy ontology search tool to explore the NIFSTD vocabularies.  Through the OntologEZ tool, users can search the ontology, navigate the class structure and view properties for each class, e.g., synonyms, definitions, original source. 

1. Click here to Launch the OntologEZ for NIF browser.  
1. The browser will launch a Java Webstart application. If the application does not launch automatically, open the .jnlp file that is downloaded to your computer. You may have to accept a security certificate from NCMIR in order to proceed. This application requires that Java 1.5 be installed on your computer.
2. The loading of the NIFSTD vocabularies may take several minutes, depending on the speed of network connection.
3. Once the vocabularies are loaded, you should see the following window:



 

4. Make sure that the Search All Classes option is selected. 



This box is located below the search box, in the upper left corner.

5. Begin typing a term in the search box window. A list of matching terms from NIFSTD will be returned in the window below the search box. If no term is found, try enabling the Fuzzy search option.



Matching terms from the NIFSTD

6. Click on the desired term. The location of the selected term in the NIFSTD hierarchy will appear in the lower window.



Term is highlighted in the NIFSTD hierarchy. Clicking on the arrowheads will expand or contract the hierarchy.

7. The NIFSTD hierarchy may be navigated by clicking on the arrowheads before each concept.
8. Properties for each concept may be viewed in the Properties window in the upper right corner. Different properties may be displayed by using the pull down menu. A list of properties can be found here. Many of these properties track the provenance of a term and are not generally useful to a human reader. Some of the more useful properties are definition, synonym, editorial note.



Note the Properties list and Display window in the upper right.





Note list of properties available for each concept. The prefix indicates the origin of each property and can be ignored.





The definition property provides a human readable definition.