Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 1 Folksonomies in Publishing Just Good Enough for Lots of Things June 19, 2008 Steve Carton

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 2 Agenda What’s the Problem? Common Finding Aids – Indexes, Taxonomies, Thesauri. Folksonomies. A Specific Example How to get there.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 3 Who Are We? Retrieval Systems Corporation –Content Management Systems, –Search Systems –Managing and delivering complex information. –Working with publishers to stay ahead in a tough market.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 4 What’s the Problem?

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 5 Problem Statement The quantity of information has grown exponentially. –Publishing now includes anyone putting information out on the internet. –Content is a thing to be managed with buzzwords like single-sourcing, XML, multimedia, syndication, blogs, wikis, and includes books, documentation, audio, video and thought streams. Finding the right bit of information can be a nightmare. –Search engines provide keyword access to text-base content. Users want more accuracy. Publishers are cutting costs. Finding aids are helping separate publishers in similar markets. –Classifications, taxonomies and indexing with arcane rules and procedures Maintenance is a big effort -- sometimes larger than the content management effort.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 6 Traditional Finding Aids Taxonomies, Indexes, Thesauri Specialized Training Costly Often ineffective for diverse user populations.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 7 Traditional Finding Aids Indexes, Taxonomies, Thesauri, Oh My!

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 8 Folksonomies to the Rescue Folksonomies offer a new approach to an old problem -- how to capture the "aboutness" of content.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 9 Folksonomies (Huh?) “Thomas Vander Wal” Web 2.0 Construct Social Networking Del.icio.us, Blogs, Tag Clouds, etc. Why not publishing? Folksonomies are a “Tom Sawyer” approach to classification of content!

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 10 How Do They Work? Content is exposed to a large group of users. Typically through a browser Tagging plugins (Del.icio.us, others) Users tag content.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 11 So What Do We Get? Content is indexed. Costs are reduced. The larger user community gets an index-based finding aid.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 12 Is There a Downside? Needs a lot of indexers/users. Reduced precision. Lack of control. Or, at least, lack of perceived control!

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 13 The Whim of the Users? Seems like a bad idea. But… We do retain control. Studies show a trending pattern of tags. And we get more perspective. People of different backgrounds and experience see content in different ways.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 14 So, Let’s Create An Example Voting Records: –Roll call from the Clerk of the House –Bill text from the Library of Congress –All available in XML. Congress-person’s stand on an issue. To get this, we need to index the bills by issue.

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Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 18 Steny Hoyer(D, Md 5 th District) Y N HR5351 Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008 Roll Call 84 Roll Call 82 Roll Call 83 Is this “ProEnvironment” or “AntiEnvironment” ?

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 19 Tagging Use browser plugin to tag Collect tags and results Manage Tagging

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 20 Managing the Tagging

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 21 Collect Tags –

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 22 Retrieve Tagged Content

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 23 Ways to be Tom Sawyer Use Del.icio.us or another tool. Expose content to users, perhaps with incentives for indexing. Work within the publishing house, especially if it’s large. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 24 In Conclusion User are demanding more accurate content location. Publishers need better finding aids to separate themselves in the market. Costs and accuracy of traditional approaches are increasing. Folksonomies offer a new and different approach. Exchange control and precision for volume and diversity. The trick is getting a volume of users.

Gilbane Conference on Technologies for Content Applications 25 Thanks To The Library of Congress Thomas: Office of the Clerk, U. S. House of Representatives: Del.icio.us: