Knowledge Sharing Effort public library
This is a public directory for information and software related to the ARPA
Knowledge Sharing Effort.
An overview of the KSE
is available online.
The ftp address of this directory is
The WWW address is
Library Contents
Within this directory are subdirectories for each of the following categories.
Each subdirectory has an introductory index.html file (README.text for ftp).
If you're using a WWW browser, you may just follow the links emanating from
this file.
Publicly available ontologies in several formats. This used to be a static
library but is now available through the
KSL Interactive Ontology
Server. The Interactive Ontology Server has many new and updated ontologies; the static versions are now out of date.
Documents related to knowledge sharing. Many are in postscript and/or MS
Word/binhex formats. The file papers/index.html
is a table of contents for the library, and contains abstracts of papers. To
post new papers here, send mail to gruber@ksl.stanford.edu.
Archives of mail discussions are available
in WWW hypertext format. You can read these archives using a WWW browser, and
follow conversational threads by traversing hyperlinks.
The file email-lists.text explains how to
subscribe to the relevant email discussion lists.
Software and documentation about the Ontolingua tools
for developing, maintaining, and delivering portable ontologies.
Includes a Lisp-based KIF parser and syntax checker.
The KSL Interactive Ontology
Server is an easier way to create, translate, and publish ontologies. We no longer support Ontolingua as a source distribution; its services are available over the web instead.
The lib subdirectory contains other free software related to knowledge sharing, including:
Agents that use the KQML/KIF/ontologies protocols.
Tom Gruber