Taxonomy and Knowledge Organization Taxonomy in Context

1. Taxonomy and Knowledge OrganizationTaxonomy in Context Tom ReamyChief Knowledge Architect KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services http://www.kapsgroup.com

2. Agenda • Introduction: Time for Taxonomies • Taxonomy Types: Strengths and Weaknesses • Formal and Browse • Taxonomy in the Organization: Intellectual Infrastructure • Content, People, Activities • Taxonomy Tips and Techniques • Development Stages • Issues and Ideas • Future Directions • Building on the Intellectual Infrastructure

3. KAPS Group • Knowledge Architecture Professional Services (KAPS) • Consulting, strategy recommendations • Knowledge architecture audits • Partners – Convera and others • First Convera Certified Taxonomy Developers • Taxonomies: Enterprise, Marketing, Insurance, etc. • Taxonomy customization • Intellectual infrastructure for organizations • Knowledge organization, technology, people and processes • Search, content management, portals, collaboration, knowledge management, e-learning, etc.

4. Time for Taxonomies • Taxonomy Time: Technology is not delivering • Professionals spend more time looking for information than using it • 50% of them spend > 2 hours a day looking • Search not enough – text strings vs. concepts • Relevance isn’t very relevant • Data mining misses 80% of significant content • Text mining needs more structure (taxonomies) • Surveys • 76% say taxonomies are important • 90% plan on a taxonomy strategy in 24 months

5. Time for Taxonomies: Word of Caution • Taxonomy is not the answer • Is this a taxonomy? • Inventories, catalogs, classifications, categorization schemas, thesauri, controlled vocabularies • Taxonomy not enough – need other structures • Metadata, facets • Taxonomies have to be used to be useful • How to fail: • Taxonomy as a project • Taxonomy as a search engine project afterthought

6. Two Types of Taxonomies: Browse and FormalBrowse Taxonomy– Yahoo

7. Browse Taxonomies: Strengths and Weaknesses • Strengths: Browse is better than search • Context and discovery • Browse by task, type, etc. • Weaknesses: • Mix of organization • Catalogs, alphabetical listings, inventories • Subject matter, functional, publisher, document type • Vocabulary and nomenclature Issues • Problems with maintenance, new material • Poor granularity and little relationship between parts. • Web site unit of organization • No foundation for standards

8. Formal Taxonomies: Strengths and Weaknesses • Strengths: • Fixed Resource – little or no maintenance • Communication Platform – share ideas, standards • Infrastructure Resource • Controlled vocabulary and keywords • More depth, finer granularity • Weaknesses: • Difficult to develop and customize • Don’t reflect users’ perspectives • Users have to adapt to language

9. Dynamic Classification: Best of Both Worlds • Search and browse better than either alone • Categorized search – context • Browse as an advanced search • Dynamic search and browse is best • Can’t predict all the ways people think • Advanced cognitive differences • Panda, Monkey, Banana • Can’t predict all the questions and activities • Intersections of what users are looking for and what documents are often about • China and Biotech • Economics and Regulatory • Facet Taxonomies • Actors, events, functions, geography

10. Taxonomy in Context: Intellectual Infrastructure • 3 infrastructures: technology, organizational, intellectual • Technology – systems and applications, servers and desktops, programmers and help desks, etc. • Organizational – business units and project groups, policies and procedures, administrators and facilitators • Intellectual – Information and knowledge, vocabularies and applications, authors and editors and librarians • Taxonomy at the nexus of the three infrastructures • Taxonomy enables communication among people, content, and technology

11. Taxonomy in the Organization:Project Approach or Infrastructure Approach • Situation: Problem with access to information • Project Approach • Publish everything on the intranet • Buy a search engine • Do some keyword and usability tests • Buy a portal (or two) • Buy content management software • Try knowledge organization – taxonomy? • Infrastructure Approach • “The path up and down is one and the same.” (Heraclitus)

12. Taxonomy in the Organization:Why an Infrastructure Approach? • Immanuel Kant • “Concepts without percepts are empty.” • “Percepts without concepts are blind.” • Knowledge Management (KM) / Information Projects • KM without applications is empty • Strategy only, management fad • Elegant taxonomies – unused • Applications without knowledge architecture (KA) are blind • IT based KM • Fragmented applications

13. Taxonomy in the Organization: Structuring Content • All kinds of content • Structured and unstructured, Internet and desktop • Metadata standards – Dublin core+ • Keywords - poor performance • Need controlled vocabulary, taxonomies, semantic network • Document Type • Form, policy, how-to, etc. • Dynamic classification with subject matter taxonomies • Audience • Role, function, expertise, information behaviors • Consistent across subject matter and people • Best bets metadata

14. Taxonomy in the Organization:Structuring People • Individual People • Tacit knowledge, information behaviors • Advanced personalization – category priority • Sales – forms ---- New Account Form • Accountant ---- New Accounts ---- Forms • Communities • Variety of types – map of formal and informal • Variety of subject matter – vaccines, research, scuba • Variety of communication channels and information behaviors • Community-specific vocabularies, need for inter-community communication (Cortical organization model)

15. Taxonomy in the Organization:Structuring Processes and Technology • Technology: infrastructure and applications • Enterprise platforms: from creation to retrieval to application • Taxonomy as the computer network • Applications – integrated meaning, not just data • Creation – content management, innovation, communities of practice (CoPs) • When, who, how, and how much structure to add • Workflow with meaning, distributed subject matter experts (SMEs) and centralized teams • Retrieval – standalone and embedded in applications and business processes • Portals, collaboration, text mining, business intelligence, CRM

16. Taxonomy in the Organization:The Integrating Infrastructure • Starting point: knowledge architecture audit, K-Map • Social network analysis, information behaviors • People – knowledge architecture team • Infrastructure activities – taxonomies, analytics, best bets • Facilitation – knowledge transfer, partner with SMEs • “Taxonomies” of content, people, and activities • Dynamic Dimension – complexity not chaos • Analytics based on concepts, information behaviors • Taxonomy is theanswer • In an Infrastructure Context

17. Taxonomy Development: Tips and TechniquesStage One – How to Begin • Step One: Strategic Questions – why, what value from the taxonomy, how are you going to use it • Variety of taxonomies – important to know the differences, when to use what. • Step Two: Get a good taxonomist! (or learn) • Library Science+ Cognitive Science + Cognitive Anthropology • Step Three: Software Shopping • Automatic Software – Fun Diversion for a rainy day • Uneven hierarchy, strange node names, weird clusters • Taxonomy Management, Entity Extraction, Visualization • Step Four: Get a good taxonomy! • Glossary, Index, Pull from multiple sources • Get a good document collection

18. Taxonomy Development: Tips and TechniquesStage Two: Development and/or Customization • Combination of top down and bottom up (and Essences) • Top: Design an ontology, facet selection • Bottom: Vocabulary extraction – documents, search logs, interview authors and users • Develop essential examples (Prototypes) • Most Intuitive Level – genus (oak, maple, rabbit) • Quintessential Chair – all the essential characteristics, no more • Work toward the prototype and out and up and down • Repeat until dizzy or done

19. Taxonomy Development: Tips and TechniquesStage Three: Evaluate and Refine • Formal Evaluation • Quality of corpus – size, homogeneity, representative • Breadth of coverage – main ideas, outlier ideas (see next) • Structure – balance of depth and width • Kill the verbs • Evaluate speciation steps – understandable and systematic • Person – Unwelcome person – Unpleasant person - Selfish person • Avoid binary levels, duplication of contrasts • Primary and secondary education, public and private

20. Taxonomy Development: Tips and TechniquesStage Three: Evaluate and Refine • Practical Evaluation • Test in real life application • Select representative users and documents • Test node labels with Subject Matter Experts • Balance of making sense and jargon • Test with representative key concepts • Test for un-representative strange little concepts that only mean something to a few people but the people and ideas are key and are normally impossible to find

21. Taxonomy Development: Tips and TechniquesIssues and Ideas • Complex Topics – intersection of subject domains and facets • What documents are often about is the intersection • Example – China and Biotech • Standards and Customization • Balance of corporate communication and departmental specifics • At what level are differences represented? • Customize pre-defined taxonomy – additional structure, add synonyms and acronyms and vocabulary

22. Taxonomy Development: Tips and TechniquesIssues and Ideas • Enterprise Taxonomy • No single subject matter taxonomy • Need an ontology of facets or domains • Enterprise Facet Model: • Actors, Events, Functions, Locations, Objects, Information Resources • Combine and map to subject domains

23. Future Directions: Knowledge Organization • New analytic methods • Cognitive anthropology, history of ideas, ESNA • New metadata schemas • SCORM, RDF and semantic Web • Learning and knowledge objects • New people models • Bloom’s Taxonomy, Gardner’s 7 Intelligences • Advanced personalization • Community-based, cognitive-based • Adaptive, dynamic presentation variations

24. Future Directions: Technology • Taxonomies within applications • Richer world knowledge and better learning • Entity extraction and fact extraction • Natural language processing (NLP) search – answers, not document lists • Integrated KM platform • Creation, structure, retrieval, application, measurement • Integrated KM/KA team • Contextualizing content: related content, best bets, expertise, communities

25. Future Directions: Well-Articulated Organization • Learning takes place throughout the system • Smart applications – adapts to users’ and community’s activities • Just-in-time training and performance support • Combination of analytics and knowledge organization • Concept-level, not document-level • Taxonomy is the brain, analytics are the eyes • Self-knowledge – highest form of knowledge • “Unexamined life is not worth living.” (Plato) • Unexamined, inarticulate enterprise is not worth having

26. Before you view: Agent keeps you up to date Your connections to content and communities, your preferences Your history and the history of other members of your communities When you add/change content Suggests categorization value, metadata values Routes to appropriate content and communities Prompt on unusual connections Pre-existing content Related content Regulatory issues Ask the question – route to experts? When you look for information Taxonomy-based dynamic browse Entities People, companies, wells Related content Regulatory, patents, BI-CI Geological data News stories Dictionaries, USGS data, databases Experts Ask questions, chat When you use information Communities Search, chat, email Performance aids, classes Stories The Contextual Desktop: Document, List of Documents, Applications Screen

27. Sources • Books • Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things • What Categories Reveal about the Mind • Geroge Lakoff • The Geography of Thought • Richard E. Nisbett • Software • Convera Retrievalware • Inxight Smart Discovery – entity and fact extraction • Courses • Convera Taxonomy Certification

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