Metadata Strategies Alternatives for creating value from metadata

1. Metadata StrategiesAlternatives for creating value from metadata Tom ReamyChief Knowledge Architect KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services http://www.kapsgroup.com

2. Agenda • To Metadata or not to Metadata • Issues and Approaches to Metadata • Infrastructure Solution • Metadata Contexts • Tools • People • Why an infrastructure Solution? • Decreasing cost and increasing value • Conclusion

3. Metadata about Metadata: Two Sources • Global Corporate Circle DCMI 2003 Workshop • Importance of Metadata • Difficulty of implementation and justification • http://dublincore.org/groups/corporate/Seattle • KAPS Group Experience • Consulting, Taxonomy & Metadata, Strategy • Knowledge architecture audit • Partners – Inxight, Convera, etc. • Intellectual infrastructure for organizations • Knowledge organization, technology, people and processes • Search, CM, portals, collaboration, KM, e-learning, etc

4. To Metadata or not to MetadataThat is the Question • Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous search results • Or to take up metadata against a sea of irrelevance • And by organizing them find them? • Why not Metadata? • Costly - $200K to set up, maintenance costs • Difficult to do • Missing, incorrect, confusing, inconsistent • Poor quality metadata can make search worse

5. To Metadata or not to MetadataThat is the Question • Why Metadata? • Metadata is expensive – only if unique job every time • Not metadata is even more expensive? • $8,200 per employee per year • IDC – 1,000 people - $2.5 mil a year lost • Need more sophisticated ROI – Saved time per search • Easy to measure, hard to believe • Use relative not absolute numbers • 60 people years for metadata for 1 million documents • 6,000 people years to write = 1% • Regulatory and Legal requirements • Stories – business needs, improvements

6. Metadata Issues and Approaches: Alternatives • Metadata, we don’t need no stinking metadata • Condemned to wander search results lists forever • Need to answer these people • KA Team – Consultants • Costly, Still need to maintain • Automatic metadata (clustering & categorization) • Uneven, poor quality • Author generated metadata • Uneven quality, inconsistent • Cultural – getting authors to want to do it

7. Metadata Issues and Approaches: AlternativesContent Value Tiers - Rosenfeld • Different levels of metadata for different documents • Not too much, not too little, just right • High value documents get full metadata, others less • Criteria: authority, strategic value, popularity, currency, reusability • Practical solution, 80-20 rule, focus on business value • BUT – doesn’t answer how to do metadata, simply limits problem • AND – adds some new problems

8. Metadata Issues and Approaches: AlternativesContent Value Tiers - Rosenfeld • Who decides what is good content? • Publishers, Authors, KA Team • Political and Quality Issues • Objective – metrics of use • Popularity is not high value • High impact if not found • Who decides which measure to use? • Authority, popularity, etc. are metadata • Almost as much effort to decide what is good as add metadata • Points in the right direction – multiple approaches

9. Infrastructure Solutions: The Right Context • No one solution • Can’t answer content questions from perspective of content alone • need to understand users and activities and organization • Context – understanding your context • Match amount of metadata to value • Match type of metadata to content and use • Lower the cost and increase the value • The problem is not that metadata initiatives have been too complex, it’s been that they have been too simple. • Metadata is more than adding keywords as an afterthought • For same or less effort, you can go from metadata that makes search worse to a set of solutions

10. Infrastructure Solutions: The Right Context • Content – structured & unstructured, external & internal • Taxonomies, Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies • Standards, best practices • Publishing Policy and Procedures • Technologies – search, portals, CM, applications • People • Central Team and Subject matter experts • Communities of users and information behaviors • Business processes and requirements

11. Infrastructure Solutions: Metadata Contexts • Why are you adding metadata? • Ranking for Retrieval – lower value • Context – dynamic browse, multiple views • Get content to users - agents • Metadata Standards – matching the level and unit of organization, • Paragraph – XML, RDF – High value, training • Document – Titles, keywords • Collection – Publisher, Functions – Facets, low cost • Documents into metadata

12. Infrastructure Solutions: Metadata Contexts • Keywords – most difficult • Common terms, unique terms, aboutness terms • Need to do it right and completely to get real value • Keywords - Need Taxonomy, Controlled Vocabulary • Enhance quality, consistency • Supports author generated metadata • Value from all fields • Titles and Descriptions – Balance of system and description • Publisher and Author – Automated and easy • DocumentType – FAQ’s, Policy Doc – support user behavior • Audience – target information, agents – variety of app’s • Purpose per Audience

13. Infrastructure Solutions: Tools • Content Management – the right place for adding metadata • Metadata generation - Keywords within a taxonomy • Take advantage of automation, rules, work flow • Hybrid and Distributed • Tools for central team • Unstructured Data management, Visualization • KA Team reduced costs, improved quality • Applications – Search, Portals, CRM, Text Mining • Need to be able to integrate and apply metadata • Analytics based on meaning, metadata • Faceted search results – high value (Marti Hearst)

15. Example

16. Infrastructure Solutions: People • Central Team supported by software and offering services • Creating, acquiring, evaluating taxonomies, metadata standards, vocabularies • Input into technology decisions and design – content management, portals, search • Socializing the benefits of metadata, creating a content culture • Evaluating metadata quality, facilitating author metadata • Analyzing the results of using metadata, how communities are using • Research metadata theory, user centric metadata • Design content value structure – more nuanced than good / poor content.

17. Infrastructure Solutions: Why? • Needed to implement any alternative approach • Justification for metadata - measure and present realistic ROI • Supplement consultants • Integrate automated and author supplied metadata • Integrate content tiers into broader context • Needed for tailoring solutions to organizations • Metadata as add on to a search engine purchase will fail • Most cost effective way to produce valuable metadata • Needed to support variety of cognitive behaviors • Monkey, Panda, Banana

18. Infrastructure Solutions: Why? • Decrease the cost of creating metadata • Tools and Processes • Content management, categorization and visualization software • Large batch of legacy content • Spread the cost – automation, author, central team • Leverage intellectual infrastructure elements – taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, metadata standards • Increase cost of not adding metadata – policy and culture, but support with software

19. Infrastructure Solutions: Why? • Increase the value of creating metadata • Better quality metadata • Categorization experts and subject matter experts • Beyond Search and relevance ranking • Multiple facets – contextual, entity, concept, document type • Dynamic classification – intersection of 2 subjects • Applications – integrated metadata for portals, agents, etc • Personalization by categorization • Beyond content – people metadata: • Community personalization, information behaviors • Community categorization

20. Infrastructure Solutions: What if I can’t get there from here? • First Step – Create an infrastructure strategic vision • Including metadata standards • KA Team – can be part time, needs official recognition • Content Management is essential • Don’t start with keywords • Buy or develop taxonomies, controlled vocabularies • Relevance ranking as last resort • Best bet metadata • Browse and dynamic classifications • Faceted Displays • Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast

21. Conclusion • You wouldn’t run a company without organizing your employees and computers, why think you can create information access without organizing your information? • More metadata, not less. • Better Metadata • Better metadata system • Better values in fields • Better value from metadata • Better processes for creating metadata

22. Questions? Tom Reamytomr@kapsgroup.com KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services http://www.kapsgroup.com