Senses and Sensibility

1. Senses and Sensibility Or Jane Austen and the Enterprise Paul Rosenberg prosenberg@yahoo.com 301-986-3826

2. Taxonomy Makes the Hidden Visible Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. – Emma There are many kinds of taxonomies: • Linnaean classifications in biology, • LC or Dewey classifications in libraries, • Subject term hierarchies in taxonomies, thesauri, and ontologies. In all of these, we express the structure via a vocabulary.

3. Enterprises and Vocabulary How much I love every thing that is decided and open! –Emma • Each enterprise has a vocabulary all its own. • Rarely is that vocabulary decided or open. • Finding that vocabulary, defining it, making it explicit, visible, and open is our challenge.

4. The Nature of Language I will not say that your mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive – letter • There are many ways to express a concept, some more kind or comprehensible than others. • Clarity of expression is often obscured by jargon, acronyms, abbreviations, and obfuscation (which we should all eschew). • Even long term employees don’t always know what the terms mean.

5. The Problem for the Enterprise The pen has been in [many] hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. – Persuasion • Search becomes much harder when vocabulary is inconsistent. • Employees are baffled. • Meaning is obscured or mistaken. • Some writers seem to strive to be obscure. • Some don’t know how to write (a topic for another time).

6. Discovering Meaning One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best. – Persuasion • This is not a recipe for mutual comprehension. • Dictionaries and glossaries can improve the situation. • Each enterprise has its own language that needs light shed upon it. There is no such thing as a universal glossary. (I discovered this the hard way when building taxonomies and found a veritable blizzard of acronyms.)

7. Steps Towards Glossary Building I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. – Mansfield Park • Collect the enterprise language. • Determine meanings (easier said than done). • Disambiguate (but allow multiple senses). • Enlist subject matter experts to help. • Find sources for non-enterprise specific vocabulary.

8. Make it Easy There are people who, the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. – Emma • Make the glossary searchable. • Make its content findable. • Make it close to the user.

9. Searching the Glossary

10. Search Results

11. Searching From Web Pages

12. Web Page Search Results

13. Acronyms and Filters

14. Keep The Glossary Current Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? – Letter • New terms and acronyms sprout like weeds. • Old terms get used in novel ways. • Solicit suggestions from users! • Accept help from subject matter experts.

15. Glossary Maintenance

16. One Way to a Glossary A large [vocabulary] is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. – Mansfield Park • Like Gaul, there are three parts to the glossary: • the specific language of the enterprise, • the general language of the industry, and • the English language itself. • The enterprise specific glossary is maintained as a SharePoint list for ease of updating, the latter two are XML files that are rarely altered.

17. Using XSLT Stylesheets One man's style must not be the rule of another's. – Emma • Each of the three sources is converted by an XSL transform to a single XML glossary format. • The Coveo Enterprise Search system indexes the XML files for search and retrieval. • A jQuery function enables lookup from web pages on the company intranet.

18. XML Storage of Content INsourceGlossary WordNet 3.0 Semantic Network <entry> <headword>property</headword> <defcode>p09626</defcode> <entrytype>r</entrytype> <senses> <sense> <sno>1</sno> <pos>nou</pos> <defno> </defno> <labno></labno> <uselabel></uselabel> <def>something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that is owned by someone;</def> <unote></unote> <hypers> <hyper> <wsp> <word>possession</word> <sno>300</sno> </wsp> </hyper> <term> <name>property</name> <def> <subject>Property Insurance</subject> <definition>Real estate, buildings, objects or articles, intangible assets, or rights with an exchangeable value of which someone may claim legal ownership.</definition> <crossRef> <type>See Also</type> <referenceTerm>buildings</referenceTerm> <referenceTerm>intangible property</referenceTerm> <referenceTerm>intellectual property</referenceTerm> <referenceTerm>machinery</referenceTerm> <referenceTerm>personal property</referenceTerm> <referenceTerm>property insurance</referenceTerm> <referenceTerm>real estate</referenceTerm> </crossRef> </def> </term>

19. Glossary Search XML Format <EntryTag> <UIDTag>IDASDX1</UIDTag> <TermTag>property</TermTag> <TypeTag>term</TypeTag> <DefinitionTag>Real estate, buildings, objects or articles, intangible assets, or rights with an exchangeable value of which someone may claim legal ownership. See Also: buildings; intangible property; intellectual property; machinery; personal property; property insurance; real estate </DefinitionTag> <SourceTag>INsource Glossary</SourceTag> <DomainTag>Property Insurance</DomainTag> </EntryTag>

20. In Conclusion Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us. – Pride and Prejudice • Be prepared for compliments. • Expect to see use of the search system rising. • You will make a difference. A farewell from Miss Austen: You have delighted us long enough. – Pride and Prejudice