Tagging, Interfaces & Content Organization Infrastructures

1. Tagging, Interfaces & Content Organization Infrastructures Joseph A Busch, Principal

2. Who I am • Over 25 years in the business of organized information • Founder & Principal, Taxonomy Strategies • Director, Solutions Architecture, Interwoven • VP, Infoware, Metacode Technologies • Program Manager, Getty Foundation • Manager, Pricewaterhouse • Assistant Director for Technical Services, Hampshire College • Chief, Technical Services, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison • Metadata & taxonomies community leadership. • President, American Society for Information Science & Technology • Trustee, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative • Co-Founder, Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services • Adviser, National Research Council Computer Science and Telecommunications Board • Reviewer, National Science Foundation Division of Information and Intelligent Systems

3. Recent & current projects Government Commercial Not-for-Profit

4. What I do Organize Stuff

5. For us, taxonomy work includes: • Metadata specification defines the properties needed to describe content so that it can be found & used. • Vocabularies are collections of terms that are used to specify some of the metadata properties. • Some vocabularies are big and hierarchical, some are small and flat. • An application profile specifies what metadata & vocabularies are required, and then represents them formally.

6. 1 Identify Objectives Conduct interviews 2 Inventory Content ID sources, spider assets & extract metadata 3 Specify Metadata Define fields & purpose 4 Model Content Define content chunks & XML DTDs 5 Specify Vocabularies Compile controlled vocabularies 6 Specify Procedures Develop workflow, rules & procedures 7 Train Staff Develop materials & train staff Seven phases of taxonomy and metadata design

7. Subject metadata – What, Where & Why: Subject, Type, Coverage Use metadata – When & How: Date, Language, Rights Complexity Asset metadata – Who: Identifier, Creator, Title, Description, Publisher, Format, Contributor Relational metadata – Links between and to: Source, Relation Enabled Functionality Use metadata to support core purposes • Metadata can be used to provide enough information for any user, tool, or program to find out everything needed to find and apply any piece of content. http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/

8. Subject metadata – What, Where & Why: Subject, Type, Coverage Use metadata – When & How: Date, Language, Rights Complexity Asset metadata – Who: Identifier, Creator, Title, Description, Publisher, Format, Contributor Relational metadata – Links between and to: Source, Relation Enabled Functionality Use metadata to support core purposes • Metadata can be used to provide enough information for any user, tool, or program to find out everything needed to find and apply any piece of content. Better navigation & discovery More efficient editorial process http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/

9. Agenda • Tagging • Interface • Content Organization

10. Tagging Overview • Tagging is better than the words that happen to occur in a piece of content. • All tagging is useful • End user tagging • Tagging by librarians • Automated tagging by OS and algorithms • Content should be tagged throughout its lifecycle, each time the content is handled and used so that it accrues value or its significance is diminished.

11. MS Office: File  Properties How many people fill this in?

12. Flickr: Organize How many people click on this?

13. Four Tagging Rules

14. Agenda • Tagging • Interface • Content Organization

15. Requirements for a tagging interface • Automated form fill-in (automatically fills in known data) • Tagging precedents (see tags already assigned by others) • Controlled vocabularies, e.g., with pull-down list • Multi-valued tags • Geo-tagging • Group tagging • Clean-up tag tools, e.g., alpha list • Batch editing • Share/Don’t share (Public/Private) • Identified owner (who can be emailed) • Almost immediate feedback, e.g., tag cloud

16. Form fill-in: Automatically filled-in known data

17. Form fill-in: Automatically filled-in known data Manual form fill-in w/ check boxes, pull-down lists, etc. Auto keyword & summarization

18. Form fill-in: Automatically filled-in known data Auto-categorization Rules & pattern matching Parse & lookup (recognize names)

19. Tagging precedents: See tags assigned by others

20. Multi-valued group tagging

21. Group geo-tagging

22. Group geo-tagging

23. Clean up tag tools: Alpha list

24. Batch edit

25. Share or don’t share tagging

26. Bulk Tagging • ID collection of related content items by pattern or context • Then, apply same attributes to all content items

27. Tag a folder • Drag & drop content items into folder • Then, content items inherit properties of folder

28. Create Content Add Metadata Publish Review & Improve Review & Improve Workflow • Approve & improve mindset

29. Interactive rewards • Almost instantaneous exposure of tags in simple user interfaces on the web provides positive reinforcement for user tagging that simply did not exist before. • For example, • Most popular • Tag clouds • Alerts

30. Most popular • Another example is most emailed from, e.g., the NY Times.

31. Tag cloud

32. Alerts • New (content selected by date) • Subscriptions (content selected by tags) • Interest (content selected by other people) • Individual (content selected for you by other people)

33. Agenda • Tagging • Interface • Content Organization

34. Content organization models: The Information Architect • Saul Wurman’s 5 ways to categorize things • By location (spatially) • By alphabet (alphabetically) • By time (chronologically) • By category (subject) • By hierarchy (BT/NT, etc) Richard Saul Wurman. Information Architects (1996)

35. Content organization models: The Records Manager • Archives & business records • By function (business purpose) • By genre (document type) Brands & Varieties Events Ingredients Locations Nutrients Organizations Functions Doc Types Account Listings Acquisitions Cash Disbursements Cash Receipts Contract Accounting Records Credit Advices Credit Card Charges Donations Employee Expense Reports Invoices Petty Cash Records Permits & Licenses Plans & Forecasts Royalty Payments Sales Receipts Accounting Administration Environment Finance Human Resources Legal Marketing & Sales Plant Operations Projects Public Relations Research & Development Tax Treasury

36. Content organization models: The Product Manager • Management (for general business operational purposes) • By products and services Systems Peripherals Services Support My Account Handhelds Monitors Printers Projectors TVs Parts All Electronics & Accessories CRT Monitors LCD Monitors All-in-One & Photo Printers B/W & Multifunction Laser Printers Color Laser Printers Ink & Printer Accessories LCD TVs Plasma TVs Desktop Accessories Notebook Accessories Digital Photography Handhelds Memory Monitors MP3 Players Networking Power Printers & Ink Projectors Software & Games Storage & Drives TVs & Home Theater

37. Content organization models: Marketer • Marketing & sales • By psycho social profiles such as lifestyle stages, personas, etc. • By industry • By location Audience Intention Lifecycle Industry Location Age Group Aisles Business Consumer Financial Risk Service Standard Inquiry Research Support Upgrade Pre-Sales Early Life Purchase Experience & Sales Process Set Up / Installation Billing Experience Support Retain & Renew Construction & Building Field Services Finance & Insurance Financial Services Government Healthcare Higher Education Hospitality Services Insurance K-12 Education Manufacturing Professional Services Real Estate Retail Transportation & Distribution Regions ZIP Code

38. Content organization models: Editor • Editorial • By content lifecycle Social Aspects of Digital Libraries: Final Workshop Report (Nov 1996) http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/research/dl/UCLA_DL_Report.doc

39. Faceted taxonomy theory & practice • How many terms are needed to provide sufficient granularity? • Not as many as you think • Post-coordinate indexing allows several simple controlled vocabularies to be combined, rather than using a single large pre-coordinated vocabulary.

40. The power of faceted taxonomy • 4 independent categories of 10 nodes each have the same discriminatory power as one hierarchy of 10,000 nodes (104) • Easier to maintain • Easier to tag by content authors • Can be easier to navigate Audience Health Industry Substance Advocacy Contractors & Grantees Environmental Professionals Federal Facilities General Public Industry Kids Researchers & Scientists Small Business Students Advisory Exposure Food Safety Health Assessment Health Effect Health Risk Occupational Health Pesticide Effects Sun Protection Toxicity Agriculture & Cattle Automobile Repair Chemical Dry Cleaning Electronics & Computer Energy Extractive Industries Food Processing Leather Tanning & Finishing Metal Finishing Allergen Biological Contaminant Carcinogen Chemical Explosive Liquid Waste Microorganism Ozone Pesticide Radioactive Waste

41. Impact on collection size by increasing number of terms per facet

42. Impact on collection size by increasing number of facets

43. Sources for 7 common taxonomies

44. Facetted tagging • How well can end users (content authors) do this? • Incentives help such as almost instantaneous feedback (AIF) • Importance of workflow (new slide?) • Tagging & re-tagging throughout content life cycle • Show graphic of content lifecycle (from UCLA NSF workshop?) • Approve & improve mindset • Test & improve

45. Summary • There are lessons to be learned from web tagging about how to get good metadata in document and content management applications. • Document and content management system tagging must be simple, and it must be almost instantaneously easier to find relevant work products.

46. Questions? Joseph A. Busch415-377-7912, jbusch@taxonomystrategies.com

47. Tagging Overview • Tagging, any kind of tagging is better than the words that happen to occur in a piece of content. End user tagging is useful, so is tagging by librarians, as are tags automatically assigned by operating systems and language processing algorithms. Content should be tagged throughout its lifecycle, each time the content is handled and used so that it accrues value or its significance is diminished. • Almost instantaneous exposure of tags in simple user interfaces on the web provides positive reinforcement for user tagging that simply did not exist before. It should not be surprising that a good user interface improves usability. • As content users flock to websites that help to organize the content on the web, advertisements and value added content services follow. The bottleneck in the semantic web has been not enough tagged content. The end user tagging revolution may begin to address this shortcoming. • There are lessons to be learned from web tagging about how to get good metadata in document and content management applications. Document and content management system tagging must be simple, and it must be almost instantaneously easier to find relevant work products.