An Online Terminology Dictionary of Traditional Korean Medicine

온라인 한의학 용어 사전 시스템 구축

Objectives : Our study aims to provide a collaborative Internet terminology dictionary like Wikipedia, where about 30,000 concept terminologies with respect to traditional Korean medicine (TKM) are shared and TKM experts can edit the terminologies. Methods : The concept terminologies have been collected and refined for three years by the terminology management system, a custom-made software built upon the Oracle database, where each terminology is divided and normalized into one or more tables. The operation of Wikipedia depends on MediaWiki, a free and open source wiki software built upon the MySQL database. The database schema of our terminology management system is different from that of MediaWiki so that MediaWiki cannot used as our terminology dictionary. Thus, we propose a way to share and edit TKM terminologies with wiki-like user interface. Results : We devise a new terminology dictionary system to search and edit terminology upon the database of the terminology management system. The online terminology dictionary of TKM has the user interface and functions which is similar to Wikipedia to support collaborative works. Conclusions : Wikipedia is operated on MediaWiki which is can be downloaded and used freely under the GNU General Public License. However, there occur problems to use MediaWiki upon the legacy system. Thus, other wiki projects start, they should be considered.