Folksonomies and Tagging

The current issue (Oct/Nov 2007) of the Bulletin of the American Society of Information Science and Technology is entirely about folksonomies and tagging. Diane Neal, as the guest editor, introduces the issue with an overview of folksonomies as a hot trend, how and where they are applied, their strengths for information retrieval and user involvement, and the weaknesses. Neal is assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences, North Carolina Central University. It's interesting to see the growing acceptance in the Library and Information Science communities of user tagging.

Introduction: Folksonomies and Image Tagging: Seeing the Future? by Diane Neal

Check other articles in the issue:

• Why Are They Tagging, and Why Do We Want Them To?
• Trouble in Paradise: Conflict Management and Resolution in Social Classification Environments
• Image Indexing: How Can I Find a Nice Pair of Italian Shoes?
• Flickr Image Tagging: Patterns Made Visible

Faceted Analysis of online media types

Anticipating new media: A faceted classification of material types Green, Rebecca and Fallgren, Nancy (2007) Anticipating new media: A faceted classification of material types. In Tennis, Joseph T., Eds. Proceedings North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization 2007 1, pages pp. 87-99, Toronto, Ontario.

Interesting application of faceted analysis.

Abstract

"The emergence of new media types, many seemingly without counterparts in the non-digital world, challenges the readiness of existing knowledge organization schemes to accommodate them. A knowledge organization scheme based on a faceted analysis of existing classes of bibliographic materials is likely to accommodate new developments better than one based on a list of unanalyzed material types. The faceted analysis undertaken here, in which seven facets are recognized (content, generation of content, recording of content, publication/distribution, physical characteristics, perception/use, and relationships) shows the inadequacy of the traditional view of the bibliographic community of a fundamental distinction between content and carrier; interaction between content and carrier is common and enters into the characterization of material types. The facet analysis is validated by applying it to two new material types, wikis and blogs.

Enterprise Search Practice Blog

Lynda Moulton of The Gilbane Group writes an excellent weblog on enterprise search called very simply - the Enterprise Search Practice Blog, having the description line - Analysis, opinion, and advice on enterprise search technologies and applications.

From time to time she comments on taxonomies and taxonomy development. For example, in The Marginal Influence of E-commerce Search and Taxonomies on Enterprise Search Technologies she wrote,

"The second distinction relates to taxonomies, and the increase in their development and use. I’ve seen a dramatic increase in job postings for “taxonomists” and have managed several projects for enterprises over the years to build these controlled lists of terms for categorizing content. What is noteworthy about recent job opportunities is that most seem to be for customer facing Web sites. Historically, organizations with substantial internal content (e.g. research reports, patents, laboratory findings, business documents) hired professionals to categorize materials for a narrowly defined audience of specialists. The terminology was often highly unique, could number in the hundreds or thousands of terms, even for a relatively small enterprise. This is no longer a common practice."

Folksonomies meet Taxonomies

Thomas Vander Wal, the person who coined the term folksonomies, spoke with Paul Miller of Talking with Talis about folksonomies and their relationship to taxonomies. User tagging can co-exist with formal taxonomies and validate them. There are many interesting points about the ways people organize information for themselves in this podcast of 58 minutes.

Thomas Vander Wal Talks with Talis about Folksonomies (Aug 3, 2007)

Book: Making Search Work

"Making Search Work" by Martin White -- Reviewed by Jothi Nedungadi, Freepint, Oct 11, 2007

Reviewer Jothi Nedungadi suggests that better titles might be "Making Intranet Searches Work" or "Making Enterprise Searches Work". These titles capture the breadth and the intent better. A company would need to be visionary to adopt the practices necessary to really improve search. He doubts that many would but still recommends the book - "This is however an impressive compilation of information and a commendable effort by the author to address intranet search. His perspectives on making searches work are invaluable. I would recommend this book to those who are considering implementing an enterprise/intranet search engine."

Martin White gives a sample in an article written for Update Magazine.

The table of contents and sample chapter are at the publisher's site - Facet Publishing Online. There is some (small) mention of taxonomy management and social tagging.

Tagging Practices and Their Value

Tagging Practices on Research Oriented Social Bookmarking Sites by Margaret E.I. Kipp (mkipp@uwo.ca) Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. Delivered at Canadian Association for Information Science 2007 (CAIS/ACSI)

[Also available through http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00011413/ ]

"Abstract: This paper examines the tagging practices evident on CiteULike, a research oriented social bookmarking site for journal articles. Tagging practices were examined using standard informetric measures for analysis of bibliographic information and term use. Additionally, tags were compared to author keywords and descriptors assigned to the same article."

Shows that user tagging can enhance findability over full-text search by keyword and indexing with controlled vocabulary.

Conclusion: "The differing terminology use in tag lists suggests that tagging may be a working example of Vannevar Bush's associative trails. He argued that associative trails better represented how users actually work with their documents: by association rather than by categorisation. (Bush 1945) This suggests that user tagging could provide additional access points to traditional controlled vocabularies and provide users with the associative classifications necessary to tie documents and articles to time and task relationships as well as other associations which are new and novel."

Classification Software - webcast

Accelerating Management and Value of Your Enterprise Content -- webcast by KMWorld on October 2, 2007. Will examine the use of classification software to deal with the fast growing volume of unstructured information in organizations.

"In simple terms, classification software catalogues your information so that it can be found easily and logically, regardless of the file format or where it is stored. It should classify new information as it is brought in as well as sort through content that is already under management. It should learn more about your content over time, so that it becomes more reliable and knowledgeable. And it should streamline searches by HR, Finance, Customer Care agents, Marketing, and all the other decision makers in your organization—making them more productive and accelerating the time-to-value of your investment in ECM."

Sponsored by IBM

More information and registration at http://www.kmworld.com/Webinars/Details.aspx?EventID=251

Ways to Improve Enterprise Search

Strategies for Improving Enterprise Search Beyond the Out-of-the-Box Experience by John Ferrara, Boxes and Arrows (Sept 11, 2007)

"Quality search results only come about through applied effort, requiring in particular the skills of an information architect.² And IAs must be ready to go well beyond their traditional front-end role, digging into the functional backend and source data of the search engine. This article outlines how we can bolster findability and win back users’ confidence."

Excellent description on the design factors that contribute to better search including the use of metadata, standardized set of keywords, and an ontology.

Book Review: Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

A book for information architects and all information junkies -- Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages by Alex Wright, reviewed in The Hidden History of Information Management, Bob Goodman, Boxes and Arrows (Sept 11)

" Information architects—and anyone curious about the roots of information management—will find much of interest in Glut’s thought-provoking tale."

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 - Taxonomy Piece

Microsoft entered the Electronic Content Management market with SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Organizations will want to examine its capabilities when planning enterprise systems for content management and search - taxonomy design and deployment may be a piece of that.

BA-Insight has published a white paper on the search capabilities of SharePoint -- SharePoint Search: Five Keys to a Successful Implementation

"BA-Insight is a Microsoft ISV partner whose product Longitude for SharePoint extends the search capabilities of SharePoint to deliver dramatic improvements in usability and relevance for the user."

One of the five keys listed is to "Plan and build an effective taxonomy in SharePoint". In the paper, BA-Insight recognizes that taxonomies provide a means for "clarifying" results, but argues that the "centralized, classified and managed store of content", attractive as it is, is impossible. They recommend leveraging SharePoint to create a "simple" taxonomy.

The first step is to accurately map the hierarchy in your organization to you SharePoint Site structure. A site per department is typical and useful. Secondly, identify what types of content is useful to each department, and create a document library and/or List for each type. Heavily leverage the Content Type construct in SharePoint to tag specific types of content. Finally, and most importantly, optimize the SharePoint ranking algorithm. Taxonomy is only necessary, because the ranking algorithm isn’t doing its job.

Some might take issue with the statement that "taxonomy is only necessary because the ranking algorithm isn't doing its job". A taxonomy can also provide navigational access, big picture, vocabulary, and greater precision in search.

BA-Insight's Longitude module adds to this the capability for users to tag content - claiming that "over time a rich set of metadata is derived". There is some value to user tagging - different points of view, meaningfulness to the user - but "rich set of metadata" is a stretch unless the tagging is managed or guided.

Microsoft SharePoint Server has a large presence in corporations and with SharePoint 2007 Microsoft is taking on content management along with enterprise search. Taxonomy design and use will need to be figured into the plans. There may be other vendors, like BA-Insight, who will develop products that will enhance the MOSS search function.

SharePoint 2007 Review: Six Pillars of MOSS (Nov 2006) at CMS Wire provides a full description of the direction and capabilities of SharePoint.