ia/ - Classification

Flickr Related Tag Browser

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 09:08:53 -0800

Felix Turner of Airtight built a fun browser to view Flickr tags, including the tags related to the current tag, plus thumbnails of photos for the current tag. Thanks Matt

DC-2005: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:49:29 -0700

Metadata based on standards such as Dublin Core are a key component of information environments from scientific repositories to corporate intranets and from business and publishing to education and e-government.

DC-2005 to be held in Madrid at University Carlos III (September 2005, 12-15) will examine the practicalities of maintaining and using controlled sets of terms ("vocabularies") in the context of the Web.

DC-2005 aims at bringing together several distinct communities of vocabulary users:
* Users of metadata standards such as Dublin Core and Learning Object Metadata (LOM), with their sets of descriptive "elements" and "properties"
* The W3C Semantic Web Activity, which has formalized the notion of "ontologies"
* Users of Knowledge Organization Systems, which encompass value-space structures such as "thesauri" and "subject classifications"
* The world of corporate intranets, which use "taxonomies"
These diverse communities share common problems, from the the use of identifiers for terms to practices for developing, maintaining, versioning, translating, and adapting standard vocabularies for specific local needs.
Then, let's discuss about in DC-2005 Conference

Technorati's new folksonomy

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:59:32 -0800

Technorati engages in a bit of folksonomy with it's newly-launched tags.

Bloggers can place a link to the tags page, and Technorati will include it in its count.

Some thoughts and works on taxonomy, search and "folksonomy"

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:01:45 -0700

An interesting (though week-old) discussion going on over at OK/Cancel regarding searching vs. sorting vs. browsing.

That also lead me to the ESP Game which uses a game-like format to develop a taxonomy for categorizing images based on user input — a folksonomy of sorts developed from head-to-head competition.

Social classification - adding users to bottom-up IA

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 11:53:42 -0700

A while ago on the aifia-members list, Gene Smith asked about social classification generated by the informal user tagging in Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. In his reply on the list, Thomas coined the term folksonomy to describe these informal classifications, and Gene’s folksonomy blog post sparked a lot of conversation around the community.

One thing that really strikes me about social classification is that it’s user-centered bottom up classification. Most bottom up classification is document or collection centric. Social classification provides insight not just into content, but into users and context as well.

Formal knowledge management ontology: Conduct, activities, resources, and influences

Tue, 18 May 2004 06:14:14 -0700

This article by CW Holsapple and KD Joshi describes an ontology for knowledge management. The abstract below is taken from the JASIST TOC for Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology V55, 7, MAY, 2004, p593-612.

This article describes a collaboratively engineered general-purpose knowledge management (KM) ontology that can be used by practitioners, researchers, and educators. The ontology is formally characterized in terms of nearly one hundred definitions and axioms that evolved from a Delphi-like process involving a diverse panel of over 30 KM practitioners and researchers. The ontology identifies and relates knowledge manipulation activities that an entity (e.g., an organization) can perform to operate on knowledge resources. It introduces a taxonomy for these resources, which indicates classes of knowledge that may be stored, embedded, and/or represented in an entity. It recognizes factors that influence the conduct of KM both within and across KM episodes. The Delphi panelists judge the ontology favorably overall: its ability to unify KM concepts, its comprehensiveness, and utility. Moreover, various implications of the ontology for the KM field are examined as indicators of its utility for practitioners, educators, and researchers.

Controlled Vocabularies: A Glosso-Thesaurus

Wed, 29 Oct 2003 05:00:22 -0800

The Fast, Leise, Steckel trio publish part four of their Boxes and Arrows series on Controlled Vocabularies. This latest installment is a glossary of terms used in controlled vocabularies. Appropriately enough, the glossary was created as a thesaurus.

Text Mining: Making Connections to Help People & Business

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:04:10 -0700

Great article in NYTimes(free registrated required) related to information retrieval, categorization/classification, and use.

"Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom"

Marti Hearst is quoted regarding information vizualization, text mining, and such. Most of the focus was on retrieval in homogenous content such as Medline. The reason why I liked the article was it provides an example of how people/business benefit from better IR tools for such disciplines as medicine.

FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)

Tue, 14 Oct 2003 07:45:08 -0700

Edward T. O'Neill and Lois Mai Chan presented at World Library and Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council 1-9 August 2003, Berlin, FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology): a simplified LCSH-based vocabulary -- scroll to find the presentation translated in English, French, German and Russian under heading 126. Classification and Indexing or download the PDF directly.

Abstract:

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) schema is by far the most commonly used and widely accepted subject vocabulary for general application. It is the de facto universal controlled vocabulary and has been a model for developing new subject heading systems around the world. However, LCSH�s complex syntax and rules for constructing headings restrict its application by requiring highly skilled personnel and limit the effectiveness of automated authority control. Recent trends, driven to a large extent by the rapid growth of the Web, are forcing changes in bibliographic control systems to make them easier to use, understand, and apply, and subject headings are no exception. The purpose of adapting the LCSH in a faceted schema with a simplified syntax is to retain the very rich vocabulary of LCSH while making it easier to understand, control, apply, and use. The FAST schema maintains upward compatibility with LCSH, and any valid set of LC subject headings can be converted to FAST headings. FAST consists of eight distinct facets. Authority records have been created for all established headings except for the chronological facet. The initial version of the FAST authority file will contain approximately two million authority records.

Cataloguing Cultural Objects: Guide to Describing Cultural Works

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:05:09 -0700

The Visual Resources Association has recently published the Cataloguing Cultural Objects (CCO) in the hopes of developing guidelines or standards for describing and retrieving information about cultural works.

CCO provides guidelines for selecting, ordering, and formatting data used to populate catalog records. CCO is designed to promote good descriptive cataloging, shared documentation, and enhanced end-user access. Whether used locally to develop training manuals, or universally as a guide to building consistent cultural heritage documentation in a shared environment, CCO will contribute to improved documentation and enhanced access to cultural heritage information.

Putting it Together: Taxonomy, Classification & Search

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:56:04 -0700

A good overview of the current state of the art in combining taxonomies and search from Jeff Morris in Transform magazine. Combining taxonomy and classification with search gives people a map of the resources available to them. This kind of taxonomy, classification and search combination is becoming essential for the major search vendors. [thanks Infodesign]

UPA NYC event: Making intranet weblog data usable

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 04:38:06 -0700

The presentation slides from my discussion on Blogging in Corporate America at the NYC UPA chapter meeting are available for downloading. I've also posted some rather short afterthoughts here.

Starting with the easy steps

Wed, 10 Sep 2003 15:10:00 -0700

Synonym Rings and Authority Files - In part 3 of the continuing series on controlled vocabularies and faceted classification, the CV tagteam champs Karl Fast, Mike Steckel, and Fred Leise explain synonym rings and authority files and how their use can bridge the gap between natural language and complex controlled vocabularies (taxonomies and thesauri). The techniques presented, unlike the complications of full faceted schemes or ontologies, are accessible and feasible for a wide variety of projects. Worth checking out if you're wanting to implement a lightweight approach to vocabulary control. [Boxes and Arrows]

TIF: Thesaurus Interchange Format

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 05:27:50 -0700

Semantic Blogging Demonstrator is pointing to Alistair Miles' and Brian Matthews' Thesaurus Interchange Format RDF schema, which is designed to link thesauri.

Software can investigate suspicious deaths

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 14:42:50 -0700

Article in New Scientist reporting that Software can investigate suspicious deaths.

At the heart of the software is a "knowledgebase" containing a huge taxonomy of the possible ways in which death can be caused and the different types of evidence and facts that relate to them - such as eyewitness accounts, medical analyses and forensic evidence taken from the scene of crime.

Found initially at Warren Ellis' blog then on my blog.