  More and more researchers have realized that ontologies will play a critical
role in the development of the Semantic Web, the next generation Web in which
content is not only consumable by humans, but also by software agents. The
development of tools to support ontology management including creation,
visualization, annotation, database storage, and retrieval is thus extremely
important. We have developed ImageSpace, an image ontology creation and
annotation tool that features (1) full support for the standard web ontology
language DAML+OIL; (2) image ontology creation, visualization, image annotation
and display in one integrated framework; (3) ontology consistency assurance;
and (4) storing ontologies and annotations in relational databases. It is
expected that the availability of such a tool will greatly facilitate the
creation of image repositories as islands of the Semantic Web.
