Skip to search.

Breaking News Visit Yahoo! News for the latest.

×Close this window

TaxoCoP · Taxonomy Community of Practice

The Yahoo! Groups Product Blog

Check it out!

Group Information

  • Members: 1210
  • Category: Indexing
  • Founded: Apr 18, 2005
  • Language: English
? Already a member? Sign in to Yahoo!

Yahoo! Groups Tips

Did you know...
Message search is now enhanced, find messages faster. Take it for a spin.

Messages

Advanced
Messages Help
Messages 3120 - 3149 of 4573   Oldest  |  < Older  |  Newer >  |  Newest
Messages: Show Message Summaries Sort by Date ^  
#3120 From: marijane white <marijane@...>
Date: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:56 pm
Subject: Re: Orphan terms in thesauruses
meejies
Send Email Send Email
 
William Denton's "How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put it on the Web" is a good place to start, in my experience.

http://www.miskatonic.org/library/facet-web-howto.html


On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 2:41 AM, Gabriel Tanase <gabtanase@...> wrote:


Hello,

Could you recommend a book or two, or perhaps a series articles available online, from which a beginner might learn about, and how to do, facet analysis? Doesn't need to be a whole book dedicated to this; one good chapter would do.

Thank you very much,
Gabriel
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrieltanase


2009/6/18 Leonard Will <L.Will@...>

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 at 08:24:02, Webindexing
<webindexing@...> wrote
>There is (I think) a general assumption that all terms in a thesaurus
>should be neatly grouped under, say, 20 top terms. In practice, it is
>often difficult to allocate a broader term to every term in a thesaurus
>without some distortion.
>
>Is there any reason why every term has to have a broader term? Is there
>anything wrong with many top terms? I am looking for general principles
>that would apply across a range of projects.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Glenda.

I think that it is often helpful to apply facet analysis to the concepts
being organised, so that we group concepts depending on the fundamental
categories to which they belong. Thus we can group them into facets such
as "objects", "materials", "living things", "people", "organizations",
"abstract concepts", "places" and so on. These facet names can become
top terms of hierarchies.

Each orphan term will belong to a facet such as these, and this is the
initial step in constructing hierarchies, because hierarchical
relationships can only apply to concepts in the same facet. (Part/whole
relationships may sometimes break this rule, but these should be used
only in certain specific and limited circumstances.)

This top-down approach has to be used in conjunction with the bottom-up
approach of examining concepts and considering what relationships they
should have, but it does avoid having a lot of orphans.

Leonard
--
Willpower Information     (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
Information Management Consultants            Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092
27 Calshot Way                              L.Will@...
ENFIELD                                Sheena.Will@...
EN2 7BQ, UK                            http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/





#3121 From: David Riecks <david@...>
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2009 6:29 pm
Subject: Permission to post update on getMETAsmart
davidriecks
Send Email Send Email
 
Seth gave permission to post the following.....
~~~

Our getMETAsmart events have received rave reviews in the West. One attendee noted the subject matter - photographic metadata - had the potential for being a "snoozefest" ( http://www.jmg-galleries.com/blog/2009/06/18/get-on-the-metadata-bandwagon-via-getmetasmart/ ), but the evening was interesting, enlightening and often fun. It also offered a good opportunity for networking. And the price - free - was affordable.

The tour, funded by an award from the Library of Congress and industry partners, arrives in the East this week, with events Monday evening at the School of the Visual Arts Theatre in New York and Thursday evening at The Washington Post. In addition to a full dose of information about how to use metadata to catalog, protect and find images, the evening includes a social hour with refreshments and a drawing for a great set of door prizes for those who register in advance.

http://www.photometadata.org/META-Events

I hope to see you at one of the events.

David

--
David Riecks  (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent)
Need Keywords for your database? Get the Controlled Vocabulary Solution
http://controlledvocabulary.com/products/ support for a dozen of the
most popular imaging applications from Adobe Bridge to Photo Mechanic.


#3122 From: "ahrenlehnert" <ahren.lehnert@...>
Date: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:33 pm
Subject: Re: Thesaurus for NAICS
ahrenlehnert
Send Email Send Email
 
Marjan,

I worked with the Localeze taxonomy which borrows heavily from the NAICS. In
some ways it is more user friendly, but I would caution that there are many
errors in Localeze, including duplicate terms and unclear categories. I worked
with a company doing precisely what you are trying to do, and the mapping was
manual and time consuming. That said, it was modified to suit the needs of the
users while retaining a connection to an established vocabulary.

I'm guessing that you are running up against what I saw on this project:  many
useful terms but also a lot of industry-specific jargon. Basically, we "reduced,
reused and recycled" by paring down the volume of terms, pilfering from Localeze
and NAICS, and altering existing terms to new terms while mapping back to
original values. It took two months, but they got the taxonomy they wanted.

Ahren

--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, "causerie" <mcauserie@...> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm hoping this group can help me with a problem I'm facing. I recently
started a position as a librarian at a small business valuation firm, and we're
in the process of migrating the firm's catalogue of reports from InMagic
DBTextWorks to SharePoint. The previous librarian used NAICS to tag the relevant
industry for the reports the firm produces (the firm produces reports for
clients in a variety of industries). An issue that has come up from the users'
perspective, however, is that NAICS terminology is not intuitive or common and
they often can't find what they're looking for by industry.
>
> As I don't intend to reclassify all the records with another taxonomy, I would
like to implement a thesaurus that maps onto NAICS for synonyms, related terms,
etc. Can anyone suggest such a product? Or is there a better way of going about
this?
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
>
> Marjan Farahbaksh
> Cole & Partners
> Toronto, Canada
>

#3123 From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...>
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2009 12:53 pm
Subject: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
keipat1962
Send Email Send Email
 
I really wanted to attend this presentation while in San Jose but was unable :-(  I hope it was a success.

From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologies and the semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the twain meet."

In one meeting, there was significant discussion regarding this along the lines of, "How do we create or enter in to a Semantic Web when we're all talking about different things?"  From that I didn't take away that we were so much talking about differences but hadn't yet applied synonymy to the discussions.

It seems that as much as we all love to talk about "collaboration" and "breaking down silos," there's just always a core of "difference" that can't be bridged.  I'm beginning to wonder if there are just too many territorial individuals or competition--even though it also seemed that not too many were exactly sure what the prize is--in this field to make it all work, but then, I suppose that's the challenge of "work" in general :-)

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!

Keith


#3124 From: "John OGorman" <jogorman@...>
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:57 pm
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
laptopjockey
Send Email Send Email
 
--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...> wrote:
>
> From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be
clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologies and the
semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the
twain meet.">

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!
> Keith
>

Excellent topic, Keith. I'll throw my two bits into the pot by saying that a
controlled vocabulary built on the principles of semantics will automatically
build the bridge of which you speak. In fact, the bridge is there, but our
experience and database / object oriented blinders prevents us from seeing it.

In my travels I have identified three 'layers' of semantics in every engagement:

1. Universal. Vocabulary values that are required to communicate with all types
of businesses.

2. Vertical. The language used by the disciplines of a given range of
businesses: think Oil and Gas, Aviation, Law and Medicine for example.

3. Proprietary. The dialects we use in-house. Every company has these: something
that has meaning at IBM that Sun Microsystems has no clue about.

At the foundation level, the vocabulary elements in all of these layers can be
managed by assigning common catgories to them, and using cannonical rules when
combining vocabulary rules into things like facts, phrases, sentences and even
so-called 'unstructured' content.

It's all there, but as you say the special interests aren't quite ready to
embrace it.

#3125 From: Nick Berry <infoglutton@...>
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2009 4:06 pm
Subject: Re: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
taxonomizer
Send Email Send Email
 
Fascinating thought, John.  Can you provide some examples of the canonical rules used to tie vocabs from these 3 domains together?  

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 6:57 AM, John OGorman <jogorman@...> wrote:


--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...> wrote:
>
> From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologies and the semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the twain meet.">

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!
> Keith
>

Excellent topic, Keith. I'll throw my two bits into the pot by saying that a controlled vocabulary built on the principles of semantics will automatically build the bridge of which you speak. In fact, the bridge is there, but our experience and database / object oriented blinders prevents us from seeing it.

In my travels I have identified three 'layers' of semantics in every engagement:

1. Universal. Vocabulary values that are required to communicate with all types of businesses.

2. Vertical. The language used by the disciplines of a given range of businesses: think Oil and Gas, Aviation, Law and Medicine for example.

3. Proprietary. The dialects we use in-house. Every company has these: something that has meaning at IBM that Sun Microsystems has no clue about.

At the foundation level, the vocabulary elements in all of these layers can be managed by assigning common catgories to them, and using cannonical rules when combining vocabulary rules into things like facts, phrases, sentences and even so-called 'unstructured' content.

It's all there, but as you say the special interests aren't quite ready to embrace it.



#3126 From: "John O'Gorman" <jogorman@...>
Date: Wed Jun 24, 2009 8:07 pm
Subject: Re: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
laptopjockey
Send Email Send Email
 
I suppose I should start by spelling the word 'canonical' correctly so people don't think I'm talking about armaments on tall ships. :~)
 
So, building a vocabulary using all three layers requires the use of 'intersecting' dimensions to keep the semantics consistent while assigning ownership to one of the three domains.  I'll try to illustrate some of the principles involved without diving too deep into the details.
 
First rule: The foundation taxonomy (called Q6) places all entities and terms in one of six facets: Agents, Assets, Locations, Actions, Functions or States.
 
Second rule:  Every entity and term must 'relate' to something in the 'real' world. This does not mean that it cannot be digital, it is just a nod to the fact that a taxonomy is a figment of someone's imagination, while John O'Gorman, normally, is not.
 
Third rule:  Every term or entity is assigned two identifiers: one to uniquely identify it to the taxonomy, and one to 'connect' it to the 'real' world entity or term as defined in the Second rule.
 
(I won't use any more air quotes...the metaphysical aspects of the framework are more or less arbitrary as is much of any model...I won't keep reminding myself to remind you.)
 
Fourth rule:  Combinations of vocabulary values create the context for the vocabulary and take the form of statements: an Asset has a Location; an Agent has a Function; an Action has a State, and so on.
 
Fifth rule:  Each term or entity is assigned a domain value that indentifies the locus of control for that term or entity. This is where the vocabulary layering takes place.
 
For example: The term Human Resources is a Function that can be said to be common to every business, so the domain assignment is global. Exploration and Production is the name of a group of Agents formally dedicated to that oil and gas Function, so it would be assigned to a vertical domain. Finally, since we want to have the flexibility to name our company's E & P Function Finders and Keepers, that string will be assigned as a proprietary entity.  Maybe not a great example, but the point is that since the facets are common for all terms and entities, we can group all of the Functions together and still layer the individual terms.
 
Sixth rule: Acquiring as much of the controlled vocabulary from the first two domains, and limiting the use of proprietary terms in the last domain - while simultaneously enforcing the use of six classification dimensions - imparts a certain predictability to a number of areas of data, information, content and knowledge management that is truly exstensible. For example, most business vocabularies are relatively small and very easy to manage, while the associations tables (see the Fourth rule) can be quite large yet almost fractal in nature.
 
I hope that begins to answer your question, Nick. Thanks for the opportunity.
 
John O'
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Berry [mailto:infoglutton@...]
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:06 AM
To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [TaxoCoP] Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...

Fascinating thought, John.  Can you provide some examples of the canonical rules used to tie vocabs from these 3 domains together?  

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 6:57 AM, John OGorman <jogorman@tiberon-ia.com> wrote:


 

--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...> wrote:
>
> From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologies and the semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the twain meet.">

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!
> Keith
>

Excellent topic, Keith. I'll throw my two bits into the pot by saying that a controlled vocabulary built on the principles of semantics will automatically build the bridge of which you speak. In fact, the bridge is there, but our experience and database / object oriented blinders prevents us from seeing it.

In my travels I have identified three 'layers' of semantics in every engagement:

1. Universal. Vocabulary values that are required to communicate with all types of businesses.

2. Vertical. The language used by the disciplines of a given range of businesses: think Oil and Gas, Aviation, Law and Medicine for example.

3. Proprietary. The dialects we use in-house. Every company has these: something that has meaning at IBM that Sun Microsystems has no clue about.

At the foundation level, the vocabulary elements in all of these layers can be managed by assigning common catgories to them, and using cannonical rules when combining vocabulary rules into things like facts, phrases, sentences and even so-called 'unstructured' content.

It's all there, but as you say the special interests aren't quite ready to embrace it.

 


 


#3127 From: Christine Connors <CJMConnors@...>
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2009 2:23 am
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
CJMConnors
Send Email Send Email
 
Hi -

I wasn't able to get to this one either [although I understand some of my slides did make it  ;) ] but I understand from Richard that it went over well - congrats!

I don't think that there is a complete division of the controlled vocab world and the semantic world; in fact, SKOS is a re-casting of the Z39 standard for thesaurus construction and was heavily consulted. An ontology is really just the next level of complexity up the scale from thesauri; you get to define your own relationships, classes as well as properties and instances can be hierarchical, and best of all - you can say NO in an ontology - this does NOT belong to that class. (That's my favorite part!) I love the power to be able to infer information in an ontology, rather than having to explicitly model every last thing. I also like the Open World assumptions - in an ontology, anything not explicitly stated is possible; in a Closed World model, anything not explicitly stated is non-existent. This is why it's ok if we don't share the same 'core' - as long as we can publish our definition at a URI, or publicly annotate another URI with our viewpoint, we have a basis for communication. After all, when you're learning a new language or local slang, you have to make some effort at asking or inferring from the context. Is it soda? Pop? Tonic? Doesn't matter. We can agree to use different labels for the same concept - which I believe is your point about synonomy. As long as it's serialized in a shareable format (a RESTful format) we'll be able to use data among the silos, as the LOD map by Richard Cyganiak and Chris Bizer shows.

The technologies are compatible in many cases, for example Synaptica (I was once the business champion for it at Dow Jones) could handle Z39, RDF, OWL, XML or even Word, Excel and HTML views of a model. SchemaLogic, WordMap, Protege, TopBraid all do a variety of models, some better at taxonomies, others better at ontologies. You can tag content with a microformat or RDFa from a taxonomy, and still query it with SPARQL.

We did note at the Digital Libraries panel that we wished there was greater interaction between the library and semantic worlds, and I encourage more librarians to consider this field. I see more and more technical folks in semantic technology space 'discovering' long held library principles - it's quite interesting! Like reference interviews... cracks me up! :)

There are some folks who are still territorial, and some who are overzealous, but you'll get that anywhere. I like that they are passionate, and most have good intentions.

SemTech was different this year - definitely more mature. We saw great demos of tools that ACTUALLY WORK (Siri, Freemix, Zemanta, Glue and OpenCalais among others) and were told frankly, nope, we haven't cracked some nuts yet. We saw more business folks and VCs than ever before. Newer voices. Less academic. A wider variety of corporations. Last year it became more about the social semantic web, this year the long time players were so busy having business meetings we barely spoke to each other. This is a great sign. But I am glad we're changing venues next year, it will be refreshing.

I suggest you check out Paul Miller's various articles/blog posts on SemTech, as well as ReadWriteWeb.

Wow - this ended up longer than I thought it would! What do others think about SemTech this year?

Cheers,
Christine

From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...>
To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 8:53:28 AM
Subject: [TaxoCoP] Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...

I really wanted to attend this presentation while in San Jose but was unable :-(  I hope it was a success.

From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologie s and the semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the twain meet."

In one meeting, there was significant discussion regarding this along the lines of, "How do we create or enter in to a Semantic Web when we're all talking about different things?"  From that I didn't take away that we were so much talking about differences but hadn't yet applied synonymy to the discussions.

It seems that as much as we all love to talk about "collaboration" and "breaking down silos," there's just always a core of "difference" that can't be bridged.  I'm beginning to wonder if there are just too many territorial individuals or competition- -even though it also seemed that not too many were exactly sure what the prize is--in this field to make it all work, but then, I suppose that's the challenge of "work" in general :-)

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!

Keith



#3128 From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...>
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2009 12:16 pm
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
keipat1962
Send Email Send Email
 
Christine, 

Terrific...thank you for this response.  Especially appreciate your paragraph, "SemTech was different this year..."  I think that best sums up what I took away; and, it seems to reflect my own personal work experiences as well as those of colleagues, in general.  Thanks a lot for sharing.

Keith

--- On Wed, 6/24/09, Christine Connors <CJMConnors@...> wrote:

From: Christine Connors <CJMConnors@...>
Subject: Re: [TaxoCoP] Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 9:23 PM

Hi -

I wasn't able to get to this one either [although I understand some of my slides did make it  ;) ] but I understand from Richard that it went over well - congrats!

I don't think that there is a complete division of the controlled vocab world and the semantic world; in fact, SKOS is a re-casting of the Z39 standard for thesaurus construction and was heavily consulted. An ontology is really just the next level of complexity up the scale from thesauri; you get to define your own relationships, classes as well as properties and instances can be hierarchical, and best of all - you can say NO in an ontology - this does NOT belong to that class. (That's my favorite part!) I love the power to be able to infer information in an ontology, rather than having to explicitly model every last thing. I also like the Open World assumptions - in an ontology, anything not explicitly stated is possible; in a Closed World model, anything not explicitly stated is non-existent. This is why it's ok if we don't share the same 'core' - as long as we can publish our definition at a URI, or publicly annotate another URI with our viewpoint, we have a basis for communication. After all, when you're learning a new language or local slang, you have to make some effort at asking or inferring from the context. Is it soda? Pop? Tonic? Doesn't matter. We can agree to use different labels for the same concept - which I believe is your point about synonomy. As long as it's serialized in a shareable format (a RESTful format) we'll be able to use data among the silos, as the LOD map by Richard Cyganiak and Chris Bizer shows.

The technologies are compatible in many cases, for example Synaptica (I was once the business champion for it at Dow Jones) could handle Z39, RDF, OWL, XML or even Word, Excel and HTML views of a model. SchemaLogic, WordMap, Protege, TopBraid all do a variety of models, some better at taxonomies, others better at ontologies. You can tag content with a microformat or RDFa from a taxonomy, and still query it with SPARQL.

We did note at the Digital Libraries panel that we wished there was greater interaction between the library and semantic worlds, and I encourage more librarians to consider this field. I see more and more technical folks in semantic technology space 'discovering' long held library principles - it's quite interesting! Like reference interviews.. . cracks me up! :)

There are some folks who are still territorial, and some who are overzealous, but you'll get that anywhere. I like that they are passionate, and most have good intentions.

SemTech was different this year - definitely more mature. We saw great demos of tools that ACTUALLY WORK (Siri, Freemix, Zemanta, Glue and OpenCalais among others) and were told frankly, nope, we haven't cracked some nuts yet. We saw more business folks and VCs than ever before. Newer voices. Less academic. A wider variety of corporations. Last year it became more about the social semantic web, this year the long time players were so busy having business meetings we barely spoke to each other. This is a great sign. But I am glad we're changing venues next year, it will be refreshing.

I suggest you check out Paul Miller's various articles/blog posts on SemTech, as well as ReadWriteWeb.

Wow - this ended up longer than I thought it would! What do others think about SemTech this year?

Cheers,
Christine

From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@yahoo. com>
To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups .com
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 8:53:28 AM
Subject: [TaxoCoP] Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...

I really wanted to attend this presentation while in San Jose but was unable :-(  I hope it was a success.

From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologie s and the semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the twain meet."

In one meeting, there was significant discussion regarding this along the lines of, "How do we create or enter in to a Semantic Web when we're all talking about different things?"  From that I didn't take away that we were so much talking about differences but hadn't yet applied synonymy to the discussions.

It seems that as much as we all love to talk about "collaboration" and "breaking down silos," there's just always a core of "difference" that can't be bridged.  I'm beginning to wonder if there are just too many territorial individuals or competition- -even though it also seemed that not too many were exactly sure what the prize is--in this field to make it all work, but then, I suppose that's the challenge of "work" in general :-)

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!

Keith




#3129 From: Matt Moore <laalgadger@...>
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2009 12:17 pm
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
laalgadger
Send Email Send Email
 
I think there are actually 3 groups out there in "MeaningMappingLand" and the divide comes from what is valued.

1. The first group values expert judgement. This group has its origins in librarianship & includes taxonomists, knowledge managers, information architects, etc.

2. The second group values technology. This group has its origins in semantic processing & AI. It has a bias towards ontology models & automation.

3. The third group is values crowds. This amorphous group has grown out of the social software crowd. Folksonomies rule OK here.

Each group tends to think that it has the right way of doing things. Each group is only partly right.


#3130 From: Christine Connors <CJMConnors@...>
Date: Thu Jun 25, 2009 8:59 pm
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
CJMConnors
Send Email Send Email
 
I couldn't agree more - very nicely summed up! The hybrid approach is still best.
Christine



I think there are actually 3 groups out there in "MeaningMappingLand " and the divide comes from what is valued.

1. The first group values expert judgement. This group has its origins in librarianship & includes taxonomists, knowledge managers, information architects, etc.

2. The second group values technology. This group has its origins in semantic processing & AI. It has a bias towards ontology models & automation.

3. The third group is values crowds. This amorphous group has grown out of the social software crowd. Folksonomies rule OK here.

Each group tends to think that it has the right way of doing things. Each group is only partly right.



#3131 From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...>
Date: Fri Jun 26, 2009 2:05 am
Subject: Re: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
keipat1962
Send Email Send Email
 
Thanks, John, I fully agree.  Thanks for making some excellent points, in particular, "but our experience and database / object oriented blinders prevents us from seeing it."   When I use it, I'll make sure to quote you! ;-)

Keith





--- On Wed, 6/24/09, John OGorman <jogorman@...> wrote:

From: John OGorman <jogorman@...>
Subject: [TaxoCoP] Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 8:57 AM

--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups .com, Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@ ...> wrote:
>
> From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologie s and the semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the twain meet.">

Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!
> Keith
>

Excellent topic, Keith. I'll throw my two bits into the pot by saying that a controlled vocabulary built on the principles of semantics will automatically build the bridge of which you speak. In fact, the bridge is there, but our experience and database / object oriented blinders prevents us from seeing it.

In my travels I have identified three 'layers' of semantics in every engagement:

1. Universal. Vocabulary values that are required to communicate with all types of businesses.

2. Vertical. The language used by the disciplines of a given range of businesses: think Oil and Gas, Aviation, Law and Medicine for example.

3. Proprietary. The dialects we use in-house. Every company has these: something that has meaning at IBM that Sun Microsystems has no clue about.

At the foundation level, the vocabulary elements in all of these layers can be managed by assigning common catgories to them, and using cannonical rules when combining vocabulary rules into things like facts, phrases, sentences and even so-called 'unstructured' content.

It's all there, but as you say the special interests aren't quite ready to embrace it.



#3132 From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...>
Date: Fri Jun 26, 2009 4:14 am
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
keipat1962
Send Email Send Email
 
Matt, I'm with Christine. Well put.  That's what I was keen to at SemTech, though I hadn't come up with three groupings. I think that third one may have put me over the edge :-)

Thanks,

Keith


--- On Thu, 6/25/09, Matt Moore <laalgadger@...> wrote:

From: Matt Moore <laalgadger@...>
Subject: Re: [TaxoCoP] Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, June 25, 2009, 7:17 AM

I think there are actually 3 groups out there in "MeaningMappingLand " and the divide comes from what is valued.

1. The first group values expert judgement. This group has its origins in librarianship & includes taxonomists, knowledge managers, information architects, etc.

2. The second group values technology. This group has its origins in semantic processing & AI. It has a bias towards ontology models & automation.

3. The third group is values crowds. This amorphous group has grown out of the social software crowd. Folksonomies rule OK here.

Each group tends to think that it has the right way of doing things. Each group is only partly right.



#3133 From: "aredmondneal" <aredmondneal@...>
Date: Fri Jun 26, 2009 6:37 pm
Subject: Re: Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
aredmondneal
Send Email Send Email
 
Much of the linking between these two camps is already done and implemented but
there is plenty of room for comment.  A well formed thesaurus will parse as an
OWL Full. This means that if you already have hierarchical associations (BT/NT),
Related terms, and synonyms, you can save the thesaurus as a full Web Ontology
Language. The cross walk between SKOS 2 and the NISO Z39.19 Controlled
Vocabularies standard is done and available for comment and implementation on
the W3C.org web site. Go to
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/PR-skos-reference-20090615/  to read and comment. They
will welcome comments from this community!

Also look at NISO Z39.19
http://www.niso.org/kst/reports/standards?step=2&gid=&project_key=7cc9b583cb5a62\
e8c15d3099e0bb46bbae9cf38a   section on Ontologies and SKOS if you have not
already read it.

Data Harmony software offers an option to export a thesaurus in either SKOS or
OWL. (disclosure--I work for Data Harmony's producer, Access Innovations)

-Alice

--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Christine Connors <CJMConnors@...> wrote:
>
> Hi -
>
> I wasn't able to get to this one either [although I understand some of my
slides did make it  ;) ] but I understand from Richard that it went over well -
congrats!
>
> I don't think that there is a complete division of the controlled vocab world
and the semantic world; in fact, SKOS is a re-casting of the Z39 standard for
thesaurus construction and was heavily consulted. An ontology is really just the
next level of complexity up the scale from thesauri; you get to define your own
relationships, classes as well as properties and instances can be hierarchical,
and best of all - you can say NO in an ontology - this does NOT belong to that
class. (That's my favorite part!) I love the power to be able to infer
information in an ontology, rather than having to explicitly model every last
thing. I also like the Open World assumptions - in an ontology, anything not
explicitly stated is possible; in a Closed World model, anything not explicitly
stated is non-existent. This is why it's ok if we don't share the same 'core' -
as long as we can publish our definition at a URI, or publicly annotate another
URI with our viewpoint, we
>  have a basis for communication. After all, when you're learning a new
language or local slang, you have to make some effort at asking or inferring
from the context. Is it soda? Pop? Tonic? Doesn't matter. We can agree to use
different labels for the same concept - which I believe is your point about
synonomy. As long as it's serialized in a shareable format (a RESTful format)
we'll be able to use data among the silos, as the LOD map by Richard Cyganiak
and Chris Bizer shows.
>
> The technologies are compatible in many cases, for example Synaptica (I was
once the business champion for it at Dow Jones) could handle Z39, RDF, OWL, XML
or even Word, Excel and HTML views of a model. SchemaLogic, WordMap, Protege,
TopBraid all do a variety of models, some better at taxonomies, others better at
ontologies. You can tag content with a microformat or RDFa from a taxonomy, and
still query it with SPARQL.
>
> We did note at the Digital Libraries panel that we wished there was greater
interaction between the library and semantic worlds, and I encourage more
librarians to consider this field. I see more and more technical folks in
semantic technology space 'discovering' long held library principles - it's
quite interesting! Like reference interviews... cracks me up! :)
>
> There are some folks who are still territorial, and some who are overzealous,
but you'll get that anywhere. I like that they are passionate, and most have
good intentions.
>
> SemTech was different this year - definitely more mature. We saw great demos
of tools that ACTUALLY WORK (Siri, Freemix, Zemanta, Glue and OpenCalais among
others) and were told frankly, nope, we haven't cracked some nuts yet. We saw
more business folks and VCs than ever before. Newer voices. Less academic. A
wider variety of corporations. Last year it became more about the social
semantic web, this year the long time players were so busy having business
meetings we barely spoke to each other. This is a great sign. But I am glad
we're changing venues next year, it will be refreshing.
>
>
> I suggest you check out Paul Miller's various articles/blog posts on SemTech,
as well as ReadWriteWeb.
>
> Wow - this ended up longer than I thought it would! What do others think about
SemTech this year?
>
> Cheers,
> Christine
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Keipat Patkei <keipat1962@...>
> To: TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 8:53:28 AM
> Subject: [TaxoCoP] Earley Presentation at SemTech 2009...
>
>
>
>
>
> I really wanted to attend this presentation while in San Jose but was unable
:-(  I hope it was a success.
>
> From what I could tell by the presentations in general, there seemed to be
clear distinctions between the Semantic Web of protocols/ontologie s and the
semantics of controlled vocabulary development and use, and rarely did "the
twain meet."
>
> In one meeting, there was significant discussion regarding this along the
lines of, "How do we create or enter in to a Semantic Web when we're all talking
about different things?"  From that I didn't take away that we were so much
talking about differences but hadn't yet applied synonymy to the discussions.
>
> It seems that as much as we all love to talk about "collaboration" and
"breaking down silos," there's just always a core of "difference" that can't be
bridged.  I'm beginning to wonder if there are just too many territorial
individuals or competition- -even though it also seemed that not too many were
exactly sure what the prize is--in this field to make it all work, but then, I
suppose that's the challenge of "work" in general :-)
>
> Impressions?  General SemTech take aways?  Thanks!
>
> Keith
>

#3134 From: Patrick Lambe <plambe@...>
Date: Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:42 am
Subject: Re: Orphan terms in thesauruses
plambe2002
Send Email Send Email
 
Gabriel

My book 'Organising Knowledge' has an extensive discussion of facets and facet analysis with examples and further references. Facet analysis is a process of abstraction and is not always intuitive to the "general user" (which can compromise their ability to exploit facets in categorisation and search/browse), and it can fall victim to logical "high science" where facets are developed because they are possible or logical, rather than because they reflect important user perspectives on content. 

P

Patrick Lambe

website: www.straitsknowledge.com

Have you seen our KM Method Cards?   http://www.straitsknowledge.com/store/



On Jun 19, 2009, at 5:41 PM, Gabriel Tanase wrote:



Hello,

Could you recommend a book or two, or perhaps a series articles available online, from which a beginner might learn about, and how to do, facet analysis? Doesn't need to be a whole book dedicated to this; one good chapter would do.

Thank you very much,
Gabriel
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrieltanase


2009/6/18 Leonard Will <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk>
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 at 08:24:02, Webindexing
<webindexing@optusnet.com.au> wrote
>There is (I think) a general assumption that all terms in a thesaurus
>should be neatly grouped under, say, 20 top terms. In practice, it is
>often difficult to allocate a broader term to every term in a thesaurus
>without some distortion.
>
>Is there any reason why every term has to have a broader term? Is there
>anything wrong with many top terms? I am looking for general principles
>that would apply across a range of projects.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Glenda.

I think that it is often helpful to apply facet analysis to the concepts
being organised, so that we group concepts depending on the fundamental
categories to which they belong. Thus we can group them into facets such
as "objects", "materials", "living things", "people", "organizations",
"abstract concepts", "places" and so on. These facet names can become
top terms of hierarchies.

Each orphan term will belong to a facet such as these, and this is the
initial step in constructing hierarchies, because hierarchical
relationships can only apply to concepts in the same facet. (Part/whole
relationships may sometimes break this rule, but these should be used
only in certain specific and limited circumstances.)

This top-down approach has to be used in conjunction with the bottom-up
approach of examining concepts and considering what relationships they
should have, but it does avoid having a lot of orphans.

Leonard
--
Willpower Information     (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
Information Management Consultants            Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092
27 Calshot Way                              L.Will@Willpowerinfo.co.uk
ENFIELD                                Sheena.Will@Willpowerinfo.co.uk
EN2 7BQ, UK                            http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/




#3135 From: Renato Alves <renatobalves@...>
Date: Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:01 pm
Subject: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
renatoalves_nce
Send Email Send Email
 

Hello,

I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question for this knowledgeable community.

 

I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about which is the best number of facets to use on a classification.

Anyone out there have a reference to this?

Thanks in advance,

Renato Alves
UFRJ
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil


#3136 From: "John OGorman" <jogorman@...>
Date: Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:33 pm
Subject: Re: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
laptopjockey
Send Email Send Email
 
--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Renato Alves <renatobalves@...> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been
> lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question for
> this knowledgeable community.
>
>
>
> I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've
> been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about
> which is the best number of facets to use on a classification.
>
> Anyone out there have a reference to this?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Renato Alves
> UFRJ
> Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
>

Hi Renato

The answer is 19.

Hope this helps. :~)

John O'

#3137 From: Patrick Lambe <plambe@...>
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2009 2:48 am
Subject: Re: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
plambe2002
Send Email Send Email
 
The answer is it depends on what you want to use the facets for, and how simple/predictable they are.

If you want to use facets for navigation, users typically start to get confused if you present them with more than three facets at a time (but can tolerate more if they are very predictable and simple).

If you're using facets to support other content management tasks or search, from the user's point of view you can have any number working in the background, but from the management point of view obviously the more you have, the more tricky it is to maintain them. The golden rule is don;t develop a facet unless it's going to do some useful work for you.

Ranganathan identified five fundamental facets, Broughton goes to thirteen. William Denton has a very good overview at

Best

Patrick

Patrick Lambe

website: www.straitsknowledge.com

Have you seen our KM Method Cards?   http://www.straitsknowledge.com/store/



On Jul 1, 2009, at 7:01 AM, Renato Alves wrote:




Hello,

I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question for this knowledgeable community.

 

I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about which is the best number of facets to use on a classification. 

Anyone out there have a reference to this?

Thanks in advance,

Renato Alves
UFRJ
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil




#3138 From: "marcy_brown" <marcy_brown@...>
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2009 11:23 am
Subject: Distance grad courses in XML?
marcy_brown
Send Email Send Email
 
Good morning,

I'm looking for a graduate-level introductory course in XML
to take as an elective for my M.A. program. I've found a few
courses, but nothing offered at a distance. If you're aware
of any, please post here or contact me directly. Much thanks!

Marcy Brown
Senior Semantic Indexer
Silverchair
marcy_brown@...

#3139 From: "renatoalves_nce" <renatobalves@...>
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2009 1:47 pm
Subject: Re: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
renatoalves_nce
Send Email Send Email
 
--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, "John OGorman" <jogorman@...> wrote:
>
> --- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Renato Alves <renatobalves@> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been
> > lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question for
> > this knowledgeable community.
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've
> > been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about
> > which is the best number of facets to use on a classification.
> >
> > Anyone out there have a reference to this?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Renato Alves
> > UFRJ
> > Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
> >
>
> Hi Renato
>
> The answer is 19.
>
> Hope this helps. :~)
>
> John O'
>

Hi John,

Yes, I agree it looked like a naive way to address this issue, but what I was
trying to ask is: are there any general guidelines or good practices for the
definition or limitations on the number of facets and categories on each facet,
for a faceted taxonomy?

Renato Alves
UFRJ
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

#3140 From: "John OGorman" <jogorman@...>
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2009 3:22 pm
Subject: Re: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
laptopjockey
Send Email Send Email
 
--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, "renatoalves_nce" <renatobalves@...> wrote:
>
> --- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, "John OGorman" <jogorman@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Renato Alves <renatobalves@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been
> > > lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question
for
> > > this knowledgeable community.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've
> > > been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about
> > > which is the best number of facets to use on a classification.
> > >
> > > Anyone out there have a reference to this?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance,
> > >
> > > Renato Alves
> > > UFRJ
> > > Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
> > >
> >
> > Hi Renato
> >
> > The answer is 19.
> >
> > Hope this helps. :~)
> >
> > John O'
> >
>
> Hi John,
>
> Yes, I agree it looked like a naive way to address this issue, but what I was
trying to ask is: are there any general guidelines or good practices for the
definition or limitations on the number of facets and categories on each facet,
for a faceted taxonomy?
>
> Renato Alves
> UFRJ
> Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
>
Hi Renato - I'm sorry, I meant no offense - really, I shouldn't post late in the
day. 19 is the number of dimensions in my framework and it seems to me like the
perfect number of facets. I have to run to another appointment, but please
accept my apology. I will post a longer response later.

John O'

#3141 From: Stephanie Lemieux <stephanie@...>
Date: Wed Jul 1, 2009 8:20 pm
Subject: Re:Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
stephaniefkmg
Send Email Send Email
 
Hi Renato,

Patrick was right with his answer of “it depends” (a typical consultant answer that I swear by)... But of course you’re looking for more :)
I wrote an article called “Designing for Faceted Search” that has some general tips (http://www.uie.com/articles/faceted_search/), and Seth and I cover that topic in a podcast (also for UIE: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2009/05/22/spoolcast-follow-up-podcast-for-taxonomy/).

Essentially, it depends on the context and the level of expertise of the user. For example, if you are in an e-commerce setting, and you are selling to the masses at the top level of your navigation, then less is definitely more. In terms of top level nav guidelines, most folks use the old 7+/- 2 rule from cognitive science (where 7 is the average number of things people can keep in their mind at any given time). Some sites get away with 10-12, but really, 6-7-8 is ideal in terms of scannability. As you scan across a number of choices, you have to evaluate them against each other, so having more than people can keep in mind at once means they have to go back and forth. User testing is the best way to gauge the right number.  

Where it starts getting interesting is when you drill down in one facet and expose additional facets for refinement. Here the tolerance is lower in general, and only creeps up if you are an expert user with specialty needs. For example, if I’m an average shopper and I drill down into cameras on a website, then I might care to see facets for Brand, Price, Megapixels, Zoom... That’s starting to push it in terms of number of facets. 3 or 4 is usually the most you want to show fully (as Patrick mentioned)... But you can show additional facets for those expert users (e.g. photography enthusiasts), and just collapse them so that they don’t overwhelm everyone else. Only the hard core will ever go perusing in your lesser-known facets.

A similar pattern exists within the enterprise: you can usually get away with a handful of facets in a search refinement interface... Again, 3 or 4 – whatever fits above the fold typically. People won’t dig too deep if they are not expert users.

So to recap, 3 or 4 is usually the sweet spot for refinements...
You can give more for expert users as long as you use UI tricks to avoid overwhelming folks
7 +/- 2 is a good rule of thumb for navigational categories

Hope that helps,
Stephanie
 
Stephanie Lemieux
Senior Taxonomy & IA Consultant
_____________________________
EARLEY & ASSOCIATES, Inc.
USA: 847-704-0438
CAN: 514-804-7833
Email: stephanie@... <mailto:stephanie@...>
Web: www.earley.com
<http://www.earley.com/>


#3142 From: "Dr. Nick Bontis" <nbontis@...>
Date: Thu Jul 2, 2009 9:31 pm
Subject: KM/IC Journal Ranking
nbontis
Send Email Send Email
 
Dear KM/IC Colleague:

I hope all is well.

I thought that you would be interested in this recent paper on journal rankings
within the field of knowledge management and intellectual capital (KM/IC).  This
scientometric study consisted of: i) a bibliographic and citation analysis of
the top 21 journals in the field using the Harzing PoP tool, and ii) a survey of
233 active researchers who were asked to rank each journal.

The table of rankings below is an integration of both methodologies.  You can
also download a copy of the full study.

Enjoy and have a great summer!

Cheers, Nick



Nick Bontis, Ph.D.
McMaster University
www.twitter.com/NickBontis




Table III Final KM/IC academic journal ranking

Rank  Tier    Journal title
1      A+     J. of Knowledge Management
2      A+     J. of Intellectual Capital
3      A      The Learning Organization
4      A      Knowledge and Process Management
5      A      Knowledge Management Research & Practice
6      B      Intl. J. of Knowledge Management
7      B      J. of Knowledge Management Practice
8      B      J. of Information and Knowledge Management
9      B      Electronic J. of Knowledge Management
10     B      Intl. J. of Learning and Intellectual Capital
11     B      Intl. J. of Knowledge and Learning
12     B      VINE: The J. of Information and KM Systems
13     B      Intl. J. of Knowledge Management Studies
14     B      Intl. J. of Knowledge, Culture and Change Mng
15     C      Knowledge and Innovation: J. of the KMCI
16     C      Interdisciplinary J. of Info. and Knowledge Mng
17     C      Intl. J. of Applied Knowledge Management
18     C      Knowledge Management for Development J.
19     C      J. of Universal Knowledge Management
20     C      The Icfai J. of Knowledge Management
21     C      Intl. J. of Nuclear Knowledge Management

SOURCE:  Bontis, N. and Serenko, A.  (2009).  "A follow-up ranking of academic
journals", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.16-26.

http://www.Bontis.com/ic/publications/BontisSerenkoJKM13-1Harzing.pdf

http://www.Bontis.com/ic/publications/SerenkoBontisJKM13-1.pdf

#3143 From: "John OGorman" <jogorman@...>
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2009 2:41 pm
Subject: Re: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
laptopjockey
Send Email Send Email
 
> --- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Renato Alves <renatobalves@> wrote:
>
>  Hello,
>
>  I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been
>  lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question for
>  this knowledgeable community.
>
>
>
>  I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've
>  been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about
>  which is the best number of facets to use on a classification.

Hello again, Renato

I recently joined this group for a couple of reasons:

One is to find out where the taxonomy community is headed.
Two is to find out whether a taxonomic approach I developed based on natural
language classification will hold up in this community.

I meant to be prococative with my answer to your question, but after reading
your response I realized my mistake. So here is the beginning of a more
definitive answer to your question.

All vocabularies and by extension all languages are referential: the symbols,
strings and sentences that we humans use to communicate are by design one step
removed from 'reality'. Words and pictures are convenient ways to make concepts
more portable.

Taxonomies, in my view, take that concept of portability one step further by
attempting to group 'like' things together. One of the  challenges with
taxonomies is that there are almost as many ways of grouping things as there are
people to group them. This phenomenon is especially evident when it comes to
software development. No two analysts will split an identical problem space in
exactly the same way. In almost every company on the planet this leads to the
duplication, segregation and lack of interoperability that causes so many
communication problems in the IT world today.

Another challenge that taxonomies present to practitioners is their inherent
hierarchical nature. There is only one place for any object in a hierarchy, and
that fact often causes a lot of friction. Ask anyone who has attempted to design
a functional classification of documents in an oil and gas company. The
hierarchical nature of taxonomies makes them brittle, which isn't a problem as
long as nothing changes. As we all know language is anything but.

Faceted classification is an attempt to apply what I call intersecting
taxonomies to a grouping exercise. A facet is defined as a mutually exclusive
and exhaustive collection of properties used to classify items in a collection.
So cameras for retail distribution might have brand, price, resolution and
availability as facets. The trick with facets, in addition to the aforementioned
ones, is to make sure they are relevant to the audience and that there are not
so many of them that they overwhelm the people trying to use them, and not so
few that you wind up with too many members in a set.

One other sort of hidden factor is this: if your problem space is relatively
small - like cameras, for example - your chances of satisfying all of the facet
requirements are relatively good. However, if you are charged with creating and
managing facets for all of the objects in your company you could be in a world
of hurt.

I have to cut this a bit short, but if you are interested in where this goes
from here, please let me know and I will continue.

John O'

#3144 From: "Dave" <daherman@...>
Date: Fri Jul 3, 2009 3:55 pm
Subject: Re: Faceted Navigation - Number of facets
hermandah
Send Email Send Email
 
--- In TaxoCoP@yahoogroups.com, Renato Alves <renatobalves@...> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm a master course student of UFRJ University, here in Brazil. I've been
> lurking here for a few days, and this is the first time I ask a question for
> this knowledgeable community.
>
>
>
> I'm researching about Faceted Navigation and Information Retrieval. I've
> been looking over the Internet for some articles/books/white papers about
> which is the best number of facets to use on a classification.
>
> Anyone out there have a reference to this?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Renato Alves
> UFRJ
> Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
>
Renato,

I would like you to reconsider the scope of your question.

As practitioners, we have found that classification structures vary depending on
the depth and breadth of the subject matter, the corpus involved, and the
application.  John Hagel, formerly of McKinsey & Co, wrote of these topics in
his book, Net Gain, almost a decade ago.  Even though it's old, you should read
his analysis of fractal depth and fractal breadth.  From there, you can begin to
research the mathematics if you are inclined.

While many of us are focused on how to apply taxonomies to content-driven web
sites, but faceted navigation can equally apply to DVDs, product catalogs, and
even social media.  Each of these requires a serious look at the objectives and
the specific application before settling on the shape of your navigational
structure.

As for an ideal number - there is generally a point of diminishing value, where
the user of the resource (i.e. site, media, etc.) becomes confused or even lost.
I agree with Stephanie that the traditional guidelines of 7 plus/minus 2 is a
good place to begin questioning the structure.  I also think that there is some
truth in the Golden Ratio (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio). 
While not directly related to taxonomies, there is something universal about
this approach that spans art, architecture, mathematics, and information
management.

Finally, other factors such as navigation aides, graphics, and consistency of
placement are important to the implementation of organizational structure.

Good luck with your studies.

David Herman
CEO-Founder
PeopleForce
email: dherman@...
web: www.peopleforce.com

#3145 From: marijane white <marijane@...>
Date: Sun Jul 5, 2009 11:46 pm
Subject: Fwd: [sla-csfo] Important -- Proposed Division Petition
meejies
Send Email Send Email
 
Hi TaxoCoP,

SLA is entertaining the idea of creating a taxonomy division.  There is a petition link in the forwarded message below, as well as a wiki at http://wiki.sla.org/display/SLATAX/Home.


-Marijane White


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Linda Yamamoto <linday@...>
Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 2:08 PM
Subject: [sla-csfo] Important -- Proposed Division Petition
To: San Francisco Bay Region Chapter <sla-csfo@...>


At the SLA Annual Conference, the SLA members interested in creating a
new SLA Taxonomy Division gained approval to circulate a petition to
identify members for the proposed division, which will focus on ways
to organize and structure information so that content is accessible
and useful.

The proposed Taxonomy Division would offer a practical context for
exploring issues and sharing experiences related to planning,
creating, maintaining and using taxonomies, thesauri, authority files,
and other controlled vocabularies and information structures.

To learn more or to sign the petition agreeing to join this new division, go to
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6tJ5CLQkMDsBnVSKgCFHxw_3d_3d.

You must be a current SLA member to sign the petition.

Contact Margie Hlava (mhlava@...) or Janice Keeler
(jkeelersla@...) for more information or to volunteer to
help get this division started.

Tom Rink
Division Cabinet Chair

--
Tom Rink
Instruction Librarian
Northeastern State University - Broken Arrow Campus
3100 East New Orleans Street
Broken Arrow, OK 74014
phone: 918-449-6457
fax: 918-449-6454
email: rink@...
webpage: http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~rink/ <http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/%7Erink/>
blog: http://guncarryinglibrarian.wordpress.com


---
You are currently subscribed to sla-csfo as: marijane@....
To unsubscribe click here:
http://sla.lyris.net/u?id=94415.ce59d0fbf67eb30bb87e73c7d0a2abde&n=T&l=sla-csfo&o=10749770
or send a blank email to
leave-10749770-94415.ce59d0fbf67eb30bb87e73c7d0a2abde@...


#3146 From: Heather Hedden <heather@...>
Date: Mon Jul 6, 2009 12:49 am
Subject: Re: Fwd: [sla-csfo] Important -- Proposed Division Petition
hbhedden
Send Email Send Email
 
I think this is great. I'm not an SLA member yet, but am thinking of
joining now.
I contacted Tom Rink, named below, to ask if there was a deadline for
the petition, and if there was time for new members to join SLA and
still sign it. He promptly responded that, although there is was
deadline, the petition has already gotten well over the minimum 100
signatures required. He mentioned that the division will need additional
volunteers for its committees, so that is something new members might
consider.

-- Heather

Heather Hedden
Hedden Information Management
Heather@...
http://www.Hedden-Information.com



marijane white wrote:
>
>
> Hi TaxoCoP,
>
> SLA is entertaining the idea of creating a taxonomy division.  There
> is a petition link in the forwarded message below, as well as a wiki
> at http://wiki.sla.org/display/SLATAX/Home.
>
>
> -Marijane White
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Linda Yamamoto <linday@... <mailto:linday@...>>
> Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 2:08 PM
> Subject: [sla-csfo] Important -- Proposed Division Petition
> To: San Francisco Bay Region Chapter <sla-csfo@...
> <mailto:sla-csfo@...>>
>
>
> At the SLA Annual Conference, the SLA members interested in creating a
> new SLA Taxonomy Division gained approval to circulate a petition to
> identify members for the proposed division, which will focus on ways
> to organize and structure information so that content is accessible
> and useful.
>
> The proposed Taxonomy Division would offer a practical context for
> exploring issues and sharing experiences related to planning,
> creating, maintaining and using taxonomies, thesauri, authority files,
> and other controlled vocabularies and information structures.
>
> To learn more or to sign the petition agreeing to join this new
> division, go to
> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6tJ5CLQkMDsBnVSKgCFHxw_3d_3d.
>
> You must be a current SLA member to sign the petition.
>
> Contact Margie Hlava (mhlava@...
> <mailto:mhlava@...>) or Janice Keeler
> (jkeelersla@... <mailto:jkeelersla@...>) for more
> information or to volunteer to
> help get this division started.
>
> Tom Rink
> Division Cabinet Chair
>
> --
> Tom Rink
> Instruction Librarian
> Northeastern State University - Broken Arrow Campus
> 3100 East New Orleans Street
> Broken Arrow, OK 74014
> phone: 918-449-6457
> fax: 918-449-6454
> email: rink@... <mailto:rink@...>
> webpage: http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~rink/
> <http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/%7Erink/> <http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/%7Erink/>
> blog: http://guncarryinglibrarian.wordpress.com
>
>
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to sla-csfo as:
> marijane@... <mailto:marijane@...>.
> To unsubscribe click here:
>
http://sla.lyris.net/u?id=94415.ce59d0fbf67eb30bb87e73c7d0a2abde&n=T&l=sla-csfo&\
o=10749770
>
<http://sla.lyris.net/u?id=94415.ce59d0fbf67eb30bb87e73c7d0a2abde&n=T&l=sla-csfo\
&o=10749770>
> or send a blank email to
> leave-10749770-94415.ce59d0fbf67eb30bb87e73c7d0a2abde@...
> <mailto:leave-10749770-94415.ce59d0fbf67eb30bb87e73c7d0a2abde@...>
>
>
>
>

#3147 From: David Snyder <dsnyder@...>
Date: Mon Jul 6, 2009 3:20 pm
Subject: Deciding to use/not use DC
snyderdavida
Send Email Send Email
 
When developing a metadata schema and associated encoding schemes for a set of resources – and assuming that the resources do not have an existing plan to be part of an OAI-PMH harvesting initiative – what is considered best practice for using explicit Dublin Core syntax (e.g.  (<dc:subject>education_and_literacy</dc:subject>)? 
 
While DC is useful to consider when developing facets in a schema, I’m wondering if it is wise to maintain strict unqualified DC encoding or if this is unnecessary. I’m referring to external content such as published articles and books, as opposed to say, internal work documents. How much likelihood is it that having explicit DC encoding will facilitate potential data shares in the future – and how much of a leg up would it provide on top of a well-maintained non-DC database? What are the downsides, if any, to maintaining DC encoding? Thanks for any feedback.

 

 

David Snyder            dsnyder@...

Reference Librarian

ASCD

Phone: (703) 575-5745 Fax: (703) 575-5403 

 


This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of 
the person(s) to whom it has been sent, and may contain information that is 
confidential or legally protected. If you are not the intended recipient or 
have received this message in error, you are not authorized to copy,
distribute, or otherwise use this message or its attachments. Please notify the
sender immediately by return e-mail and permanently delete this message and any 
attachments. ASCD makes no guarantee that this e-mail is error or virus free.

#3148 From: Paula Markes <onedawta@...>
Date: Mon Jul 6, 2009 6:45 pm
Subject: Use Cases for vocabulary management
pamarkes
Send Email Send Email
 
I'm about to embark on a small project to develop Use Cases for the
creation and management of controlled vocabularies.  As there are so
many vocabulary management tools available, I imagine this may have
already been done.  So, before I start to "re-invent the wheel", I
wonder... does anyone know of any publicly available Use Cases that
cover this activity?

-Paula

#3149 From: Avi Rappoport <analyst@...>
Date: Wed Jul 8, 2009 1:54 am
Subject: Re: Deciding to use/not use DC
netsonli
Send Email Send Email
 
At 11:20 AM -0400 7/6/09, David Snyder wrote:
When developing a metadata schema and associated encoding schemes for a set of resources - and assuming that the resources do not have an existing plan to be part of an OAI-PMH harvesting initiative - what is considered best practice for using explicit Dublin Core syntax (e.g.  (<dc:subject>education_and_literacy</dc:subject>)?
 
While DC is useful to consider when developing facets in a schema, I'm wondering if it is wise to maintain strict unqualified DC encoding or if this is unnecessary. I'm referring to external content such as published articles and books, as opposed to say, internal work documents. How much likelihood is it that having explicit DC encoding will facilitate potential data shares in the future - and how much of a leg up would it provide on top of a well-maintained non-DC database? What are the downsides, if any, to maintaining DC encodin
 g? Thanks for any feedback.

You might look at some of the semantic search work, I was surprised to find that they often start with Dublin Core and build on it.

Best of luck,

Avi

-- 
Enterprise Search Analysis -- Search Tools Consulting
   (510) 845-2551  / analyst9@...
Complete Guide to Search Engines for Web Sites and Intranets: <http://searchtools.com>

Messages 3120 - 3149 of 4573   Oldest  |  < Older  |  Newer >  |  Newest
Add to My Yahoo!      XML What's This?

Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Guidelines NEW - Help