Straits Knowledge 2007From Taxonomies to Tagging From Taxonomies to Tagging: developing taxonomy strategies that are appropriate to your goals Patrick Lambe

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Agenda TAXONOMY FORMS Defining our terms Different taxonomy forms 1.Where tagging fits in 2.Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging? TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES 1.Framework for identifying your objectives 2.Different objectives mean different forms 3.Case studies 4.Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your organisations

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Definitions Organisational Effectiveness: the ability to set and achieve organisational goals within target timeframes at a competitive cost and effort; the ability to respond appropriately to emerging risks and opportunities in the environment Taxonomy work supports organisational effectiveness by providing: Consistency - especially in customer facing processes Coordination - especially for minimising errors Compliance - for facilitating accountability Cost Management – by avoiding re-work and redundancy Control - for ensuring timely and relevant decisions, especially to meet risks and opportunities in the environment

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Definitions Taxonomy - Taxis + Nomos - Customary ways of arranging things  Classification scheme  Semantic  Maps a knowledge domain for human navigation Taxonomy work - the activities involved in constructing taxonomies  Uncovering natural ways of organising  Negotiating common vocabularies  Representing the domain in a way that supports user needs and purposes

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com What is a Taxonomy?

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Lists Have a single topic or organising principle Building block for taxonomy

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Tree A collection of lists Each level should be subdivided on the same principle Example Relationships: Commonality in attributes or purpose (eg motivational factors, competencies required for jobs, engineers in my firm) Collocation (eg living room furniture, people in my department) Sequence (eg project startup activities, regular duties, activity cycles) Chaining (eg cause and effect chains, stages in a manufacturing process) Genealogy (eg parent-child relationships) Gradients in attributes (eg from Private to General, from tall to short)

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Trees and cognition George Miller “magic number” of 7+/-2 the span of attention – how many things we can pay attention to at any given time ‘immediate memory’ (short term memory) the number of categories that could be discriminated in any environment Cognitive coping strategies: chunking tracking multiple attributes [long term memory] Miller, George A., 1956 ‘The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information’ The Psychological Review vol.63 pp.81-97

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Tree

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Tree Heuristics for tree development To support chunking and familiarity use “natural associations” and “natural vocabularies” Top-down development does NOT do this Remove ambiguity and uncertainty, enhance predictability (eg duplicate terms in different places, imprecise language, inconsistencies) For deep trees you need extraneous familiarity mechanisms – eg an established professional vocabulary - OR use Facets ! (ie tracking multiple attributes

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Hierarchy A tree following strict rules of construction Inclusiveness – the top category “includes” all subordinate categories in the tree Relational consistency – the kind of relationship between each level in the hierarchy is exactly the same relationship Inheritance – subordinate categories in a hierarchy inherit all of the attributes of superordinate categories, which makes it easier to focus just on the differentiating attributes and makes hierarchical taxonomies very economical to use – by knowing which branch of the tree we are in we can already say a lot about anything we find in that branch Mutual exclusivity – an entity can belong in one and only one class which is why this strict sense of hierarchy is so attractive – it eliminates ambiguity

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Matrix Framework to classify in 2 or 3 dimensions Each dimension may be a separate tree or list Dimensions are orthogonal – mutually exclusive

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Matrix

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Facets Multiple category lists or trees Facets are orthogonal – mutually exclusive

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Controlled Vocabulary List of all the authorised terms in your taxonomy Admission of new terms is ‘controlled’ Metadata schemas refer to controlled vocabulary lists (pick lists) to ensure consistency of metadata

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Thesaurus Dictionary of all the authorised terms in your taxonomy Relationships between terms is expressed (broader, narrower, related terms) Alternate, non-authorised terms point to authorised terms

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Folksonomy Aggregated collection of tags on socially exposed content, where tags are uncontrolled and contributed by individuals principally for self- interested retrieval Tag selection may be influenced by tag clouds Tag selection may be influenced by the desire for display High ambiguity and variability On large content collections produces rich serendipity

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Folksonomy

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Folksonomy

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Ontology A semantic system of concept-relationship-concept strings, expressing relationships of any kind between concepts “Thesaurus on jetfuel” Used to help machines make useful links between concepts, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Agenda TAXONOMY FORMS Defining our terms Different taxonomy forms 1.Where tagging fits in 2.Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging? TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES 1.Framework for identifying your objectives 2.Different objectives mean different forms 3.Case studies 4.Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your organisations

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Our Environments

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com What Taxonomies Do

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Structure & Organize Smoother and more efficient workflow, fewer errors, better reuse of information and knowledge within the designated area of work Institute of Technical Education - tree

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Common Ground Better workgroup coordination, better reuse of knowledge and information, faster retrieval of information and knowledge assets within workgroups Cabot Corporation - facets

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Boundary Spanning Better leverage of knowledge and information assets across workgroups, fewer duplications, conflicts and re-work instances, better cross-organization coordination Dept of Homeland Security - thesaurus building

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Sensemaking & Discovery Greater confidence in decision-making, consensus-building and communications across specialist or decision-making teams, greater ability to spot opportunities and risks, enhanced innovation capability Unilever Research - “disposable taxonomies”

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Taxonomy Strategies TAGGING

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com Agenda TAXONOMY FORMS Defining our terms Different taxonomy forms 1.Where tagging fits in 2.Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging? TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES 1.Framework for identifying your objectives 2.Different objectives mean different forms 3.Case studies 4.Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your organisations

From Taxonomies to Tagging © Straits Knowledge 2007www.straitsknowledge.com

© Straits Knowledge 2007From Taxonomies to Tagging Any Questions?