in other words...: using multiple taxonimies
TRANSCRIPT
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College.
NELINET Annual Bibliographic - 16 November 2007
Jane Ouderkirk, Managing Director of Knowledge & Information Assets
In other words… : Using multiple taxonomies
Contexts and Perspectives
Contexts and perspectives in which information objects are:
§ Created
§ Collected/ deposited
§ Described § by creators § by collectors§ by potential users§ over time§ across cultures/languages§ across professions§ relative to the volume of similar objects in a collection
Discovered/used
Harvard Business School
1. 1,800 MBA Students
2. 98 Doctoral Students
3. 201 Faculty FTE
4. 1,044 Staff
5. 33 Buildings
What’s in a name?
Knowledge & Library Services (KLS @ HBS)
§ Baker Library Services§ Contemporary collections research, reference, access
§ Historical Collections§ Reference and access services to the world’s largest business history collection
§ Web & Intranet Services§ Web service management for HBS
§ Knowledge & Information Assets Management§ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Knowledge & Information Assets Management KIA was Collections Management was Library Technical Services
Three Units-
§ Taxonomy & Metadata Management§ grew from Cataloging§ provides metadata and taxonomy management and consulting services to HBS
§ Content Management § grew from Acquisitions & Serials Management§ responsible for acquisition and management of purchased or licensed content
§ Information Lifecycle Management§ grew from Records Management§ responsible for management of internally created content from its creation to
destruction or transfer to permanent archival storage
Shift in core products and services
§ More information to manage, but less of it in physical formats
§ More competition from vendors for cataloging, processing, access…
§ Increased demand for metadata and taxonomy management to meet
business needs specific to HBS
§ Voluminous increase in internally created digital information§ Faculty publications and administrative records, documents, and documentation§ Databases, wikis, i-sites, spreadsheets, websites, photographs, videos, podcasts,
weblogs, Second Life sessions, Facebook groups…
Changed customer service models
Just in case - Libraries attempt to anticipate information needs buy
acquiring what customers might need
Just in time – Libraries get the information when it is needed (resource
sharing)
Just for you – “I want the information that I need delivered to my desktop
when I need it!” (RSS feeds, purchase on demand, improved discovery
tools)
Definitions
§ Controlled vocabulary = list of terms explicitly enumerated, controlled
and published by a registration authority
§ Taxonomy = controlled vocabulary terms hierarchically structured with at
least one parent-child relationship to other terms in the structure
§ Thesaurus = networked collection of controlled vocabulary terms with
related or equivalent terms.
Perspective -
Perspective
§ the appearance of things relative to one another as determined by their
distance from the viewer wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
§ the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed ; point
of view cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/fellows/Hemmingson/webquest/slsdictionary_htlm.htm
§ the process of viewing something from a distinct vantage point; or, the
impression one has of an object or landscape from particular vantage
point www3.newberry.org/k12maps/glossary/index.html
Perspective (time)
X >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Y >>>>>>>
30 years of observation reveal a greater degree of change than 5 years
1967: AACR first published; OCLC founded
1968: First MARC publication issued
Perspective (Access)
1975 - Periodicals Rooms with hundreds of volumes of print
index/abstract/citation services – each with its own taxonomy
1985 - DIALOG – sequential searches of online serials information using
terms from dozens of paper thesauri with distinct vocabularies
Today – free-range, full-text searching across platforms, BUT!
An example-
1. In the West, ALL Swans were white
until 1697.
2. highly improbable and unpredictable
events can have massive impact
3. Humans attempt to create order
where there is chaos or to impose
order where there is none
4. Predicting the future is more complex
than analyzing what we know of the
past.
Perspective: What is The Black Swan about?
OCLC Subject : Uncertainty (Information theory) -- Social aspects. Forecasting.
Amazon Customer tags: decision making (46) risk (39)
intellectual meditations (32) complexity (24) history of science
(21) historical dimensions and perspectives (20) knowledge
(19) random (16) investing (15) chaos (12) philosophy (7)
LibraryThing: probability(33) economics(23) finance(20)
philosophy(19) mathematics(16) statistics(16) Business(13)
science(12) randomness(11) Psychology(10) risk(10) investing
(7)
Who’s managing what with which tools?
§ Multiple repositories for Content and Metadata
§ ILS/OPAC
§ Visuals Images
§ Archival Finding Aids
§ CMS Content Management Systems
§ Institutional Repositories
§ DAMS Digital Asset Management Systems
§ ECMS Enterprise Content Management Systems
Where do I find the words?
www.taxonomywarehouse.com
1. Over 660 Taxonomies
2. Classified by 73 subject domains
3. Produced by 261 publishers
4. In 39 languages
5. 65% produced in digital media
6. 100 directly licensable
Customized sets
Say what? Say how? Says who?
§ User terms (web analytics)
§ Cross-mapped thesauri – shared input§ Bombay = Mumbai=map coordinates=mail code=phone code§ Tradenames = generic§ English=French=Chinese=…
§ Corporate & Personal Name registries
§ Tag clouds and topic maps as finding aids
§ Cooperative tag binding
Stovepipes or silos vs. bridges and maps
§ KW search reveals only that which is explicitly stated within an object
§ Faceted searches against a single taxonomy can help or hinder
§ Metadata facilitates or protects/prevents/limits discovery§ Metadata embedded in objects§ Metadata stored in repositories with pointers to objects§ Digital Rights Management
§ Taxonomy helps narrow or broaden search within a structured hierarchy
§ Thesaurus widens search with inclusion of related/equivalent terms
§ Data Registries improve consistency
What next?
§ Smarter data-mining software§ Computational linguistics§ Entity extraction software
§ Cross-application tag aggregation§ Cooperative tag binding across platforms, professions…
§ Cooperative relationship and concept mapping§ For audience subsets§ By audience subsets
§ Attention metadata – ALL about individual user behavior
§ Perspective analysis and customized context = advanced personalization
Thank you!