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From Taxonomies to Tagging: developing taxonomy strategies that are appropriate
to your goals
Patrick Lambe
© Straits Knowledge 2007 www.straitsknowledge.comFrom Taxonomies to Tagging
AgendaTAXONOMY FORMS1. Defining our terms2. Different taxonomy forms3. Where tagging fits in4. Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are
they the optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging?
TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES1. Framework for identifying your objectives2. Different objectives mean different forms3. Case studies4. Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your
organisations
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DefinitionsOrganisational 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
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DefinitionsTaxonomy - 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
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What is a Taxonomy?
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ListsHave a single topic or organising principleBuilding block for taxonomy
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TreeA collection of listsEach level should be subdivided on the same principleExample 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)
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Trees and cognitionGeorge Miller 1956 - “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
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Tree
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TreeHeuristics 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
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HierarchyA 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
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MatrixFramework to classify in 2 or 3 dimensions• Each dimension may be a separate tree or list• Dimensions are orthogonal – mutually exclusive
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Matrix
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FacetsMultiple category listsor treesFacets are orthogonal – mutually exclusive
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Controlled VocabularyList 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
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ThesaurusDictionary 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
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FolksonomyAggregated 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 cloudsTag selection may be influenced by the desire for
displayHigh ambiguity and variabilityOn large content collections produces rich serendipity
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Folksonomy
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Folksonomy
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OntologyA 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
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© Straits Knowledge 2007 www.straitsknowledge.comFrom Taxonomies to Tagging
AgendaTAXONOMY FORMS1. Defining our terms2. Different taxonomy forms3. Where tagging fits in4. Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the
optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging?
TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES1. Framework for identifying your objectives2. Different objectives mean different forms3. Case studies4. Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your
organisations
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Our Environments
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What Taxonomies Do
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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
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Common Ground Better workgroup coordination, better reuse
of knowledge and information, faster retrieval of information and knowledge assets within workgroups
Cabot Corporation - facets
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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
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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”
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Taxonomy Strategies
TAGGINGTAGGING
© Straits Knowledge 2007 www.straitsknowledge.comFrom Taxonomies to Tagging
AgendaTAXONOMY FORMS1. Defining our terms2. Different taxonomy forms3. Where tagging fits in4. Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the
optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging?
TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES1. Framework for identifying your objectives2. Different objectives mean different forms3. Case studies4. Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your
organisations
© Straits Knowledge 2007 www.straitsknowledge.comFrom Taxonomies to Tagging
© Straits Knowledge 2007 From Taxonomies to Tagging www.straitsknowledge.com