Building Metadata Into the Filing Systems

Why Organize When You Can Search?, Jason Tiret, Information Management (Nov 30)

Information professionals have long debated the relative merits of using keyword search versus doing some indexing of key terms - and should those terms by user selected (the tagging we know from delicious) or applied from controlled vocabulary? These issues get picked up in this article in which the author concludes, "Some heavy lifting up front to structure and tag the metadata will greatly optimize the search, retrieval and interrogation of the results for end users."

Using metadata well for indexing depends on planning for development and user access, and making definitions clear. Of course, governance and stewardship are two important principles in maintaining metadata that can be easily used and which will do the job of assisting in retrieval.

Insight Series - Earley and Associates

Earley and Associates is running an Insight Series of four weekly webinars on integrated global marketing that includes consideration of taxonomy and metadata management. Series begins with It’s All About eTaxonomy - Series Introduction on November 4. Attendance is "free with registration". Sounds like a bargain.

Webinar Series on Business Taxonomies

ASIS&T and PPC Taxonomy Webinar Series

ASIS&T and the Project Performance Corporation are putting on a four part webinar series on design and management of business taxonomies.

"The first session in the series will provide an introduction to taxonomy and metadata benefits, design concepts, and strategies. The subsequent sessions will detail methodologies on 1) how to run taxonomy design workshops within your own organization, 2) how to design taxonomies from start to finish, and 3) how to ensure the appropriate maintenance and management of those taxonomies over time. "

Dates: Nov 5, 8, 10, and 12, 2010

It's free to ASIS&T members, and $49 US / session for non-members.

Taxonomy does matter

Does Taxonomy Matter in a New World of Search and Discovery By Suzanne BeDell and Libby Trudell, Online (Sep/Oct, 2010)

This article grew out of a session at the SLA Conference in 2010. Libby Trudell at Dialog and Suzanne BeDell at Elsevier have a breadth of knowledge and experience with methods to aid in information retrieval. They ask - "Do taxonomies still add value when keyword searching seems sufficient to many end users? "

On the scene are

1. semantic technologies for extracting meaning.
2. data mining and analytics
3. natural language and entity extraction (names, places)

"Steps for NLP involve recognizing parts of speech, taking into account contextual information such as proximity. Increasingly, this relationship information is captured as a Resource Description Framework (RDF) triple. RDFs extend the linking structure of the web to use universal resource indicators (URIs) to name the relationship between things as well as the two ends of the link. Yahoo! and Google now include triples in their indexing. "


Collectively these are done better when combined with controlled vocabularies. An "ontology spectrum graphic" is mentioned that would make everything clearer, but it's not included in this free web version of the article.

Using Social Tagging

Why Social Tagging Isn’t Enough for High Value Content, Seth Earley, Sept 20.

Seth Earley argues that social tagging "would be completely inappropriate when trying to organize high value content. For instance, content used for customer support, marketing processes, asset reuse, or processes with a compliance component."

His earlier posting of Folksonomy vs Taxonomy outlines where social tagging is useful in conjunction with controlled vocabulary (not as a replacement).

Course: Building Internal Competencies in IOA

Seth Earley presents this 53 minute webinar on Building Internal Competencies in IOA as an orientation to a course that is offered through AIIM.org. The webinar opens by stating the need for taxonomy, metadata, and information framework, and describes the issues surrounding the challenges of findability, of structured and unstructured data. It recommends taking an enterprise view, and applying a discipline of Information Organization and Access (IOA, and paying close attention to usability. Presents a strong argument for taxonomies on unstructured content.

The is an excellent webinar that addresses the current issues in managing information in the enterprise. You may want to take the course.

http://www.slideshare.net/Earley/building-internalcompetenciesinioa-4862181

Earley and Associates partners with AIIM.org to deliver this 4 day course.

"AIIM four day Master Class ... see how your organization's challenges can be dealt with by applying proven techniques and methodologies to solving the toughest information management problems."

Analyzing Data from Card Sorting

Dancing with the Cards: Quick-and-Dirty Analysis of Card-Sorting Data, Shanshan Ma, UXMatters (Sept 20)

Card sorting can be a good way to learn from users how they group information - to get their perspective on organizing content. It is often used as a step in building a navigational taxonomy. This article describes two types of card sorting: open and closed.

But it does have its challenges. Invariably each person will have a different take on how things should be sorted and the labels to be attached. This article introduces wasy of analyzing the data to see the patterns.

"Card sorting is a great method of understanding users’ interpretations of a Web site’s structure. Through my experiences using card sorting, I have recognized that there are several challenges with using the method—in particular with data analysis and the presentation of results. To address these challenges, my colleagues and I have employed spreadsheets to visually represent card-sorting data and present the results of studies to clients, and we have received positive feedback from them. My experiences have also demonstrated that gathering additional insights from card-sort participants through questionnaires and providing more context for participants add value to the method. User research practitioners should consider enriching the results of their card sorts by taking the approaches I’ve described".

The other taxonomists

The Globe and Mail has reported on a decline in taxonomists - the kind that classify flora and fauna.

The Case of the vanishing taxonomists by Matthew Hart, Globe and Mail, Sept 4, 2010

Why are there fewer traditional taxonomists who can examine the physical traits in a specimen, classify it and name it? Partly, it's a change to molecular taxonomy.

"Younger scientists are drawn to molecular taxonomy, where powerful new techniques in the study of DNA have revealed interspecies connections never before suspected.

Such advances, including the Canadian-pioneered use of DNA barcodes to identify species, while undeniably useful, are “not a replacement for the [traditional] taxonomist,” says Gary Saunders, who holds a chair in Molecular Systematics and Biodiversity at the University of New Brunswick.

“At times, the DNA-generated answer is wrong,” Prof. Saunders says. “A trained taxonomist can look at a molecular result and know that there is cause to question the outcome.” "

Does this seem similar to the view that content in enterprises does not need to be classified - it can simply be analyzed at the word (molecular) level to be found and used?

Taxonomists in Information Management aren't looking for new species, but they should be looking for new views and new topics that relate to the business and make sense of it.

Determining Classes

Skills of a Classy Taxonomist, The Taxonomy Blog, (Aug 10)

It appears than taxonomy and ontology are not quite the same but they do have a common base. At a SemTech conference the consensus seems to have been that, "Taxonomists build hierarchies, and ontologists determine classes or categories."

Author goes on to describe the use of class (or facet) analysis.

"Defining classes or ontology work typically precedes building the taxonomy. Defining the classes is like writing a specification for the taxonomy; in fact defining classes is the same as defining facets. The goal of a taxonomist and ontologies should be to define a specific, unambiguous description of a term that helps manage how we find and organize content so the pathways are clear and specific; adding an ontology ensures that the term is placed in the most specific categories to help ensure clarity and lack of ambiguity."

Modelling strategies are needed to do this well. Posting mentions some tools and approaches.

Open Text and Semantic Navigation

Open Text Launches Semantic Navigation, Open Text press release (Aug17)

Open Text has added semantic search to its enterprise content management software. Search function at corporate websites is notoriously bad. Open Text says that its system uses semantic and context analysis to group content by meaning and make search and browse more productive.

"Open Text Semantic Navigation offers a way to improve the user experience. At the core of the offering is the Open Text Content Analytics engine that intelligently extracts meaning, sentiment and context from content, and in turn marries that content to what a customer or prospect is looking for on a website. The result is that audiences more consistently and quickly find helpful, valuable information with much less effort. "

Globe and Mail will be among the first to use this.

Open Text describes the software in this podcast.