Monetizing Knowledge

The fields of information science and economics have been expanding and overlapping for some time now. With the ever-increasing recognition of the value of knowledge organization systems (KOS), especially in the context of improved technologies and practices for them, it is time to look at them from the perspective of economics. This information came from a feature in ASIS&T’s April/May 2014 Bulletin by our own Marjorie Hlava titled, “Introduction: Economics of Knowledge Organization Systems.”

Indicative of this change are entirely new ways in which individuals and information systems generate, provide access to, and link information. In line with this change is a growing need to better integrate and leverage knowledge organization systems (KOSs). How does one measure the true value of successful information organization, navigation, and retrieval?

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

Connecting the Data

EBSCO Information Services recently released Communication Source as a resource for communication research. Communication Source was developed from a merger of EBSCO databases, Communication and  Mass Media Complete and Communication Abstracts (formerly published by SAGE). The Digital Journal brought this news to our attention in their article, “EBSCO Information Services Releases Communication Source™ – the Most  Comprehensive Resource for Communication Research Available.”

Communication Source includes coverage of more than 1,000 core titles and features full text for more than 600 active periodicals, including 150 full-text titles not found in other EBSCO academic databases.

With any database project, it is important to remember the value of a solid taxonomy. How the content is classified impacts the findability of your data. Professionals should look for an experienced builder of solid standards-based taxonomies to associate content for appropriate machine-assisted indexing. Access Innovations can provide solutions that are ANSI compliant.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.

Knowledge Organization Systems and Return on Investment (KOSs and ROI)

Let’s call him George. George was having a very bad day. He needed legal advice. So, over his lunch hour he scheduled an appointment. After George described his situation, the lawyer pulled a book from the shelf behind him. After briefly scanning it and checking precedent, he confidently told George with a smile, “Relax. This is a slam dunk.” On his way out of the office, George gazed at the consultation invoice and muttered to himself: “15 minutes! Only 15 minutes and he charged me $325.00!”

On his way back to the office, George’s car starting making some serious grinding noises whenever he turned to the right. He pulled into the local Fix-It-All Garage and described the noise to the technician. After turning over the keys, George looked through the large glass window as the mechanic pulled here and tugged there at his car up on the lift. After only a few keystrokes at his computer station, the technician began installing over the next ten minutes what looked to George like a $10.00 part. In the blink of an eye, George was standing at the counter with another invoice. He called his wife to grumble: “He pulled and tugged in two different spots and then charged me $325.00. I’m in the wrong line of work!”

Certain that his ulcer was acting up, George stopped at the clinic on his way home that day. The doctor, who agreed to fit him in right away, asked a few short questions, consulted his desk reference guide,  and started writing a prescription. Moments later, speechless George could only grimace as he faced yet another hefty bill. Poor George.

Besides a considerable amount of cash, what was George missing? Someone might say that George knew the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. Because George was able to successfully confront and overcome several perplexing and complex problems, someone else might say, “What a great quality of life George has!” It all looked so deceptively easy. However, to focus only on the “interface” is to fail to consider the years of training and experience behind each professional who knew just what questions to ask, just where to look and pull and tug, and just which resource to consult.

How does one measure the true value of successful information organization, navigation, and retrieval? Access Innovations Inc. offers superior customer service, ease of product use, and support, combined with years of experience in order to provide outstanding quality. Speak with the CEO of Access Innovations, Inc., Jay Van Eman, about the qualitative and quantitative criteria used to assess successful KOSs and the proper rationale for measuring ROI in your setting. Are you getting real value for the cost?

Check out these additional resources:

Why Knowledge Management Is Important To The Success Of Your Company

The Use of Return on Investment (ROI) in the Performance Measurement and Evaluation of Information Systems

ROI & Impact: Quantitative & Qualitative Measures for Taxonomies

Eric Ziecker, Information Consultant
Access Innovations, Inc.

Internal Strategy

Organizational intranets are a major part of internal communications around the world. The responsibility for posting is housed in various locations, e.g., communications, information technology, human resources, and even the executive offices. There seems to be no standardization in technology or content management. What many do not realize is that internal communication is far more than controlling the rumor mill or sharing the latest human resources policy. It is about strategy.

Some organizations, such as The University of Pretoria, have undertaken an information strategy approach to managing content within the organization. This interesting topic was covered in Web Project Management’s article, “Corporate intranets – an information strategy approach: a case study at the University of Pretoria.”

The main objectives of the information strategy are to make information more accessible to all staff and students, provide security for sensitive information, and reduce the cost (both in dollars and staff hours) of managing the information, as well as to improve the quality.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.

Information Architecture Position Available in Southeast Asia

As usual, we are always excited to share with our readers career opportunities in the world of taxonomy, metadata and semantic technology.

A newly created position in southeast Asia for a manager of information architecture has been announced by a Fortune 100 corporation. This business has a diversified working culture and large presence in its regional headquarters in Singapore.

The successful applicant would be responsible for developing and maintaining an effective strategy for the information domain that would include security, business intelligence, information management, and data architecture.

The role would require you to actively engage various business units to monitor the quality of the solution design through delivery projects while leading a team to promote standardization of core and repeatable technologies. You can learn more and apply here.

If you are searching for a new position in your chosen career or maybe a new one, best of luck in your endeavors.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

10th Annual Semantic Technology & Business Conference

The Semantic Technology & Business Conference celebrates its 10th year, and the predictions indicate that it will be better than ever. It is also becoming increasingly relevant to the modern business world. Semantic technologies are being used to generate revenue, save money, and solve real problems. The Semantic Technology & Business Conference brings together today’s industry leaders and practitioners to explore the challenges and opportunities jointly impacting both corporate business leaders and technologists.

This year’s event will be held in San Jose, CA on August 19-21, 2014 and will feature innovative panels, case studies, tutorials, roundtables, keynotes, and lightning sessions to explore how businesses and companies utilize semantic solutions. To honor the decade long event, they are also holding the second Hackathon.

For more information about sponsoring or speaking, click here. Registration will be live soon.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.

Access Innovations Named in KMWorld’s Annual “100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management”

Access Innovations, Inc., a leader in digital data organization, announces its inclusion on KMWorld’s annual list of the “Top 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management.”

Access Innovations, Inc. is featured for its third year, after debuting on the list in 2005. Other notable companies given a spot on the 2014 top 100 list include Adobe, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

“Criteria for inclusion vary, but all companies have things in common. Access Innovations, Inc. has proven to define the spirit of practical innovation by blending sparkling technology with a deep, fundamental commitment to customer success,” says Hugh McKellar, KMWorld editor-in-Chief.

Marjorie M. K. Hlava, president of Access Innovations, says she is honored by her company’s accolade. “Access Innovations prides itself on pushing the edges of technology to meet the needs of the next generation of knowledge management,” she says. “It’s challenging and rewarding to be at the cutting edge of knowledge management, and it’s delightful to be recognized as a leader in the field, making content findable for our customers and their users,”

The Top 100 Companies That Matter list is compiled annually by editorial colleagues, analysts, theorists and practitioners. Unlike many other trade lists, inclusion is not purchased and is at the sole discretion of KMWorld’s editors.

For a full list of the Top 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management, pick up the March issue of KMWorld, which is available on newsstands now, or click here to view the online article.

About Access Innovations, Inc.

Founded in 1978, Access Innovations has extensive experience with Internet technology applications, master data management, database creation, thesaurus/taxonomy creation, and semantic integration. Access Innovations’ Data Harmony software includes automatic indexing, thesaurus management, an XML Intranet System (XIS), and metadata extraction for content creation developed to meet production environment needs. Data Harmony is used by publishers, governments, and corporate clients throughout the world.

About KMWorld

The leading information provider serving the knowledge, document, and content management systems market, KMWorld informs more than 45,000 subscribers about the components and processes—and subsequent success stories—that together offer solutions for improving business performance. KMWorld is a publishing unit of Information Today, Inc.

Technology Openings

We are always excited to share with our readers career opportunities in the world of taxonomy, indexing, and even semantic technology. Even if you aren’t in the market for a career move, it is always good to stay on top of what is available and how the fields are evolving.

Apple is looking for a Siri Language Engineer fluent in Cantonese in Santa Clara, CA. If you meet these narrow specifications, you could be responsible for the international engineering of Siri. From speech recognition to natural language processing, machine learning, big data consumption all the way to speech synthesis, you will be involved.

Continuing down the “cool jobs” theme, Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, CA is looking for someone for their Business Intelligence and Analytics Graduate PhD Internship.

If you are in the middle of hunting for a job, best of luck in your endeavors.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

Information Sharing Positions Available

Looking for a new job? Or maybe you just want to keep tabs on the industry? We are always excited to share career opportunities in the world of taxonomy, indexing, and information management that we find with our readers. Even if you aren’t in the market for a career move, it is always good to stay on top of what is available and how the fields are evolving.

The Children’s Campaign in Florida is looking for a Knowledge Navigator/Consultant. I like that job title and really, aren’t we all knowledge navigators? To learn more about this position, click here.

While we are sharing, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is looking for a Dryad Librarian. Before you ask, I read to find out what Dryad was as well. Dryad is a curated, general-purpose repository that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Interesting.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

The Changing Challenges for Semantic Enrichment

Changes and trends in information technology are perhaps best discovered by examining what users of IT say about how they’re using it. One of those opportunities is happening soon. Every year, Access Innovations hosts a meeting for users of the company’s Data Harmony software products. The theme of this year’s Data Harmony Users Group meeting  is “Then and Now: Addressing the Changing Needs of Semantic Enrichment.” This begs some questions: Just what are the new challenges that semantic enrichment needs to meet? And why are the needs changing? Some preliminary answers may be found in the DHUG meeting agenda.

On Monday, February 10, Jay Ven Eman (Access Innovations’ CEO) will give a presentation on “Leveraging Your Semantic Enrichment Investment.” He asks (and presumably will answer, at least in part), “How far can you push semantic enrichment? … What processes and tools are needed?” It is easy to imagine numerous organizations asking the same questions in one form or another. Those who have some familiarity with semantic enrichment can sense the scope of possibilities. They are asking semantic enrichment to accomplish more for their information assets. They want to push semantic enrichment technologies. These expectations put demands on the related processes and tools, which in turn are given expanded capabilities. And with new possibilities, the cycle continues.

On Tuesday, February 11, Marcie Zaharee of The MITRE Corporation will present a case study, “Taxonomies as a Tool to Increase Discovery of Intelligence Community Data Assets.” Access Innovations’ taxonomy/thesaurus software, Thesaurus Master, was used as a taxonomy management tool. The taxonomy that MITRE built was used as an aid in populating metadata fields, with the immediate goal of increasing discovery of data assets. The bigger goal was to promote data visibility, accessibility, and understandability for Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) data. Accomplishing this, in a very complex modern world, calls for taxonomy development capabilities that provide detailed hierarchical relationships, software recognition of the many ways in which each concept and each piece of equipment can be described, and the ability to specify associations among related concepts.

That presentation will be followed by another case study, “Public Library of Science Thesaurus: Year One.” Rachel Drysdale of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) will discuss the process of building the thesaurus, and of integrating it into the PLOS journals workflow and publication platform. These activities are representative of those of the various online publication and research platforms that have been springing up since the establishment of the Internet. The growing volume of digital materials in digital journals and databases requires excellent search capabilities, which require the integration of semantic enrichment tools into publication platforms.

Large volumes of publishing data beg for analysis and interpretation, in order to manage that data and the underlying platform. Kevin Boyack of SciTech Strategies will show how a comprehensive map of the scientific literature was used to visualize the PLOS thesaurus. The visualization, based on semantic enrichment in the form of the metadata associated with each article, can be used to show coverage and trends for various entities such as journals, institutions, and even individual authors. This is a new way of utilizing the data made available by semantic enrichment.

On Wednesday, February 12, John Kuranz and Kathryn Brown of Access Integrity will discuss the automated use of taxonomy-based metadata for medical coding and verification purposes. This new technology combines a semantic enrichment, rule-based taxonomy tool with comprehensive medical coding datasets. The IntegraCoder concept extractor software analyzes text in electronic medical records and recommends relevant codes, significantly increasing coder productivity and efficiency. (For further information, see http://integracoder.com/, or view a Youtube video.) The development of this technology answers needs caused by the increasing complexity of the coding systems required for billing and statistical purposes. In turn, this increasing complexity has been a result of the rapid advances in medical diagnosis and treatment in recent decades.

Next, Bob Kasenchak, Access Innovations’ production coordinator, will give a presentation on “Leveraging Semantic Fingerprinting for Building Author Networks.” As online publishing platforms and their content assets have grown, and as researchers have proliferated, so have the problems resulting from multiple authors with similar or identical names, and from the many individual authors who have gone by various names. Similarly, specification of author affiliations has become difficult, because of the variety of names that any given institution may have gone through by this point in history. Semantic enrichment techniques that identify authors and institutions now need to rise to the challenge. Bob points out that “With the rise of ORCID and other universal databases of researchers and institutions, it is increasingly crucial for publishers to sort out their own data containing named entities.” His talk will explain Access Innovations’ approach to clarifying author identities so that a solid foundation exists for author networks.

Kirk Sanders, an editorial services project manager at Access Innovations will present a case study on “Data Harmony Custom Features as Implemented for Triumph Learning.” The Triumph Learning project, which required representation of the new Common Core educational standards and associated concepts in a thesaurus, called for complex mapping techniques to establish connections among the various metadata values. The nature of the metadata required expanded display options, which required a custom export format. The new semantic enrichment techniques represented in this project can be seen as meeting the challenges represented by advances in educational standards and philosophies.

A common thread in these presentations is that our world is changing. It is becoming more complex and, in many ways, more advanced. New techniques for semantic enrichment are a response to the needs created by these changes.

Barbara Gilles, Taxonomist
Access Innovations

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