Tutorial on Constructing a Thesaurus

Tim Craven, Professor Emeritus at The University of Western Ontario, makes available resources he had developed for courses in the Library and Information field. One of these is a Web-based module that teaches the basics of constructing an information retrieval thesaurus and includes interactive quizzes.

See this and some other resources at http://publish.uwo.ca/~craven/

Taxonomy Boot Camp 2009

Taxonomy Boot Camp is coming up - November 19 - 20 - in San Jose, Ca.

Keynote speakers are Thomas Vander Wal - credited with creating the term folksonomies; and Leslie Owens from Forrester - author of many insightful articles.

From the KMWorld announcement --

At Taxonomy Boot Camp 2009 attendees will learn about:

• Creating and implementing successful taxonomies
• Enhancing your information infrastructure with the right taxonomy
• Taxonomy design concepts and strategies
• New technologies & tools and where the market is headed
• Selecting the right metadata, taxonomy approach, and tools for your environment
• Evaluating auto-categorization schemes and tools
• Managing the build, buy, or automate decision
• Working collaboratively with your content and stakeholders
• Case studies,lessons learned, and best practices
• Measuring and demonstrating the business impact and ROI
• Managing and growing a taxonomy

Semantic Web and the work of librarians

Can Librarians Be Put Directly Onto the Semantic Web? by Eric Hellman, go to Hellman (Aug 4, 2009)

What does semantic web mean to librarians? It may mean moving away from an orientation to the human user when creating metadata, to constructing for the machine.

"In many respects, the most important question for the library world in examining semantic web technologies is whether librarians can successfully transform their expertise in working with metadata into expertise in working with ontologies or models of knowledge. Whereas traditional library metadata has always been focused on helping humans find and make use of information, semantic web ontologies are focused on helping machines find and make use of information. Traditional library metadata is meant to be seen and acted on by humans, and as such has always been an uncomfortable match with relational database technology. Semantic web ontologies, in contrast, are meant to make metadata meaningful and actionable for machines. An ontology is thus a sort of computer program, and the effort of making an RDF schema is the first step of telling a computer how to process a type of information."

SLA Taxonomy Division

Taxonomy building gets additional recognition from SLA as it sets up a division for its members who work in this field.

SLA Now Has a Taxonomy Division!

The Division Chair is Marjorie M.K. Hlava. She wrote, “Taxonomies are widely used and increasingly proven to cut search time by more than 50 percent, increase worker productivity up to seven fold, and allow for location and application of mission-critical information throughout an organization. We are so pleased that SLA members and knowledge workers practicing in this area will be able join this network of taxonomy professionals within a premier professional organization with global reach.”

User Testing with Card Sorting

Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox (Aug 24)

Card sorting can be used for user testing of navigation.

As we learn from this article, "Card sorting is often a good way to get initial insights into users' mental model of an information space, and in our project it did indeed generate good starting point for the IA. After the card-sorting study, we conducted several rounds of user testing of wireframes, further refining the structure and how the site presented it. All of this effort would have been wasted if we'd gotten data on users' keyword-matching skills rather than on how they approach the site's target healthcare issues. "

Has worked examples.

Evolution of the Web to Web 3.0

Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English (Presentations) from Digital Inspiration (May 2009)

This is brilliant - Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 explained in a single slide of points, some text, and 5 excellent slide presentations. As the note on the page explains, the two about the red stamp describe the semantic aspects and workings very clearly.

Good Look at Semantic Web

Jean Graef of the Montague Institute answers the question, Where will semantic content come from? in terms we can begin to understand.

"Semantic web" is usually a very theoretical idea of linking up data in magical ways. In this posting, we get a real-life example drawn from a mortgage refinance application of how a semantic infrastructure would work.

Also raised here is the matter of trust. How will we know to trust the information that is brought together through a semantic infrastructure?

Jean Graef concludes: "The technology piece of the infrastructure is almost ready; it's the semantic content and editorial oversight that's missing.

Card Sorting with Users

Holger Maassen has the inside track on card sorting. In this posting on Card Sorting Maassen describes using card sorting as a categorization technique with user groups in order to learn more about how they view and work with information.

"Card sorting is a categorization technique where users sort cards describing and giving their picture, their understanding and their mental picture of concepts, workflows and information and knowledge."

But, he notes, card sorting will not deliver a finished taxonomy.

He presented this as the first of a series on design and analysis techniques for improving user experience.

ASIST on Information Architecture

BULLETIN of the American Society for Information Science and Technology for August / September 2009 [pdf] is a special issue about Information Architecture.

Contents:

+ A Tonic for the Busy Troops by Stacy Merrill Surla, Guest Editor
+ The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design: Five Principles,
Five Anti-Patterns and 96 Patterns (in Three Buckets) by Christian Crumlish
+ The Debut of Usable, Influential Content by Colleen Jones
+ An Internet Watered Down by John Pettengill
+ Gaming the Design: Using Game Design Techniques in the Realm of Investing by Kellie Rae Carter and Dominic La Cava
+ IA for the Rest of the World by Miles Rochford
+ Lessons from Slime Mold: How to Survive and Thrive in Ever-Changing Organizational Environments by Kate Rutter

+ A Reflection on the Structure and Process of the Web of Data by Marko A. Rodriguez

From the editor:

"Our annual special section on information architecture (IA) – A Tonic for the Busy Troops – is the centerpiece of this issue and a very fine one. Stacy Surla, our associate editor for IA, has put together a collection selected from presentations at
the 2009 IA Summit.As they were coming in, I was already emailing friends saying that a number of the articles were going to be must-reads. Immediate utility and impact were Stacy’s selection criteria, and she certainly implemented them well: lots of very timely information for practitioners and some fine thought-pieces. Stacy’s introduction says it all in terms of what’s there and why. Don’t miss it.

Our feature article is another one not to miss. Marko Rodriguez writes about theWeb of Data – the RDF (Resource Description Framework) side of the web – and the problems of exploiting it.Whether you are an RDF novice or someone for whom RDF is daily fare, Marko’s ideas and insights will intrigue you. It’s an outstanding contribution."

Hakia's Commercial Ontology

A New Commercial Ontology from hakia by Dr. Riza C Berkan, Hakia (

CEO of Hakia, Dr Riza Berkan, proposes a Commercial Ontology that will serve the types of queries that users put to the web. Berkan says these have a "commercial pattern", but I suppose we could think of it as consumer interest just as easily. The key bit is -- "One particular distinction of the commercial pattern is that they come in short packages including a name (onomasticon), or always referring to something sold, bought, watched, heard, etc." Commercial Ontology will also work with sequence of words - which may be more efficient than individual terms.


Also see hakia Unveils Commercial Ontology, Search Engine Watch (July 30)