Java is a popular programming language for natural language processing. I compare and evaluate 12 Java libraries designed to access the information in the original Princeton Wordnet databases. From this comparison emerges a set of decision criteria that will enable a user to pick the library most suited to their purposes. I identify five deciding features: (1) availability of similarity metrics; (2) support for editing; (3) availability via Maven; (4) compatibility with retired Java versions; and (5) support for Enterprise Java. I also provide a comparison of other features of each library, the information exposed by each API, and the versions of Wordnet each library supports, and I evaluate each library for the speed of various retrieval operations. In the case that the user's application does not require one of the deciding features, I show that my library, JWI, the MIT Java Wordnet Interface, is the highest-performance, widest-coverage, easiest-to-use library available.
