Access Insights
Knowledge Organization Systems
I attended the 2010 meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) in Pittsburgh. There were quite a few papers and posters I found aligned with taxonomies and the whole area of linked data, semantic implementations and the Dublin Core. The DC-2010 conference, sponsored by the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative (DCMI), was held immediately prior to ASIS&T in the same hotel so the over lap in participants and programming was spot on for my interests. The ASIS&T annual meeting is the main venue for disseminating research centered on advances in the information sciences and related applications of information technology. It has veered heavily into usability for the last few years and this change back to mainline information science was refreshing!
Adventures of a TaxoTourist
The trip was awesome—a dream exotic vacation to Bali. It was not about eat, pray, love, but a rather unbalanced midpoint to meet my Oz-dwelling daughter. I enjoyed dashes of ecotourism and agritourism, but even in full vacation mode I couldn’t fully suppress my perspective as a taxonomist.
Read MoreWhere Are They Now?
Tech companies come and go. There are always tech savvy entrepreneurs with big ideas looking to fill a need in the market and investors looking to get the huge returns that only come from investing in tech startups.
But tech is risky, markets are volatile, and oftentimes what seems like a good idea is not always as good once implemented in the real world. A good example of this is the dot com boom and subsequent bust in the early 21st century. You could get funding on a back of the envelop business plan. Billions of dollars were invested in tech startups with big ideas and big dreams. Many of these dreams were shattered when investors realized they were not getting the same returns they had hoped.
Read MoreClassified Homeland Security: Transforming Data into Information
October 11, 2010 – You’ve just read the title and already there is trouble. “Classified” has multiple uses. What is meant here? When discussing homeland security, one might conclude that the security level of documents is under discussion. Assigning security levels to documents provides security classifications. Organizing a plant or an animal into a unique…
Read MoreStretching Taxonomy in a Social Way
We read with interest “A Revised Taxonomy of Social Networking Data.” In the last month, the arguments in the article have provided a framework for thinking about the amount of the information flowing through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media conduits.
Read MoreLinked Data, DOI, RDF, and Dublin Core
On a quest to reach the holy grail of the Semantic Web.
What started as a straightforward and elegant model by Eric Miller as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) has become incredibly complicated. When I first came upon this model, in the early days of the Dublin Core standard discussions, it was a framework. That is, it was a self describing way to transmit an XML file. The RDF formed a wrapper around the XML by including the XML Schema (DTD) so that whoever received the file would know what the elements, attributes, allowed ranges, etc. were, and be able to use the data included without further hunting for file descriptions, translations of the fields (elements), how they related, etc. RDF has grown up and become embroiled in discussions of triples, Subject-Object-Predicate discussions, and its use as the basis for linked data and even the basis for the final real implementation of the Semantic Web.
Read MoreUsing a ‘Collabulary’ to Create a Taxonomy
Libraries and librarians have been the gatekeepers to knowledge stores for more than 200 years. As their collections grew, they invented ways to easily find the information and knowledge they stored by creating classification systems and then subject headings to identify the concepts or topics represented in the items being stored. Every major language now has at least one classification system, and most countries have created and adopted classification and subject access systems, such as the Universal Decimal System (UDC) or Lenin’s outline of knowledge for Russia. In the United States, the use of the Dewey Decimal Classification system, Sears Subject Headings, and the Library of Congress Classification system is widespread.
Read MoreBreaking Down Automatic Metadata Generation/Extraction
There are two approaches to automatic metadata generation/extraction and within those, many variations. The first is statistical. Generally speaking, the types are Bayesian, vector, neural nets, automatic clustering, etc. These methods work off the principle that if in a big set of data two words occur together frequently then those words are related conceptually.
Read MoreCalculating the ROI of Semantic Enrichment
We are often asked for help in calculating the potential return on investment (ROI) of investing in a taxonomy. How this calculation is done depends on the type of organization and who will be the users of the taxonomy. For any content-intensive organization, using a taxonomy increases findability, which in turn leads to greater utility and value for the organization’s content assets. Within the enterprise, this translates into hours and dollars saved by reducing the time required to find things, as well as the time and expense of redoing research or other work that can’t be found.
Read MoreThe Race for Relevancy: Information Foraging
The key word in Web 2.0 is relevancy. The surge in social networking sites and mobile internet means we are always connected and always feeding information into the greater whole. Easy access to relevant information is emerging as a major focus as the internet continues to be flooded with exponentially more information.
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