IA Tools to Inform

IA Summit 2003

Madonnalisa G. Chan

Tools to Inform IA

• Search Engine

• Taxonomy

• XML

What is a Search Engine?

• Information retrieval software application that facilitates the indexing of distributed networked information.

Search Engine: Factors to Consider• How soon do you need it? (time)

• What resources are available? (financial, hardware, & technical skills)

• Will this be for an intranet, file system, or internet sites? (scope)

• Identify requirements(business, technical, user interface).

More information on factors for consideration:http://www.searchtools.com/guide/index.htmlhttp://www.suntek.com.hk/articles/se-checklist.html

Search Engine: Vendors & Industry

Search Toolshttp://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools.html

XML Searchhttp://xml.gov/presentations/loc/xml_search_engine_vendors.html

Industry Reports from Forrester, Gartner, and Jupiter can provide you more information about the industry and market leaders.

Search Query Logs Analysis

• Search can be used as an IA tool to inform the structuring and labeling of sites.

• Encourages a dialogue between end-users and site owners.

• Log analysis can help optimize the search engine and bridge the gap of content availability and user needs.

More information during Rich Wiggins’ presentation at this conference.

What is a Taxonomy?

• Structured hierarchical information of a given subject or topic area.

• The theory and practice of classification.

Taxonomy: Factors to Consider

• How soon do you need it? (time)

• How many terms in it? How big is it? (scope)

• How will it be used at your organization? (indexing, controlled vocabulary, search/browse)

• How will this be implemented? (search engine, content management system, database system)

• What types of tools and specialists will you need at what part of the process?

Taxonomy Process

• Text Mining Kea Freeware: http://www.nzdl.org/Kea/

• Structuring (next slide)

• Integration/PublishingExport and transformation capabilities into XML or XHTML.

Taxonomy: Vendor ListIA Wiki

http://www.iawiki.net/CategoryOntology

Montague Institute (membership required) http://www.montague.com/review/starnes.html

Search Tools http://www.searchtools.com/info/classifiers-tools.html

Thesaurus Design Toolshttp://www.iawiki.net/ThesaurusDesignTools

Web Thesaurus Compendiumhttp://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/~lutes/thestools.html

Willpower Information – Thesaurus Management Softwarehttp://www.willpower.demon.co/uk/thestabl.htm

XML.com: http://www.xml.com/2002/11/06/Ontology_Editor_Survey.html

XML Editor: Factors to Consider

• How large are the files?• Will the XML documents represent full text

or meta-information?• Do you need the XML structure to be

modeled to a particular database or application?

• Will you need the capability to create XSL or XSLT?

XML Editors

Free XML toolshttp://www.garshol.priv.no/download/xmltools/

XML Spy

http://www.xmlspy.com