The Semantic Web - ISWC 2009

Book excerpt: As the Web continues to grow, increasing amounts of data are being made available for human and machine consumption. This emerging Semantic Web is rapidly entering the mainstream and, as a result, a variety of new solutions for searching, aggregating and the intelligent delivery of information are being produced,bothinresearchandcommercialsettings.Severalnewchallengesarise from this context, both from a technical and human–computer interaction p- spective – e.g., as issues to do with the scalability andusability of Semantic Web solutions become particularly important. The International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) is the major inter- tional forum where the latest research results and technical innovations on all aspects of the Semantic Web are presented. ISWC brings together researchers, practitioners, and users from the areas of arti?cial intelligence, databases, social networks,distributedcomputing,Webengineering,informationsystems,natural language processing, soft computing, and human–computer interaction to d- cuss the major challenges and proposed solutions, success stories and failures, as well the visions that can advance the ?eld.