This Master’s thesis looks at a technology for describing knowledge structures and associating them with information resources, namely Topic Maps. Topic Maps are an ISO/IEC standard that enables the structuring and navigating of large amounts of information. The Topic Map technology is based on the ways of structuring knowledge that can be found in indexes, thesauri, glossaries and semantic networks.

In the thesis we first present the theoretical background to Topic Maps and look at the Topic Map standard itself in some detail. We also present some related technologies and initiatives: Information Retrieval (IR) and the Semantic Web. We then describe our modelling and implementation of a Topic Map over a pharmaceutical research area. The implementation was made in an XML standard called XTM (XML Topic Maps). Also included is the testing of an automated categoriser of documents, Autonomy’s Categorizer, and the possibility of using this in connection with Topic Maps. Lastly we discuss the problems we encountered during our work and put forward some ideas and some possible scenarios for future development of Topic Map usage.