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Standard Taxonomies. Tom Reamy Knowledge Architect KAPS Group tomr@kapsgroup.com. Agenda. Types of Taxonomies Formal, Browse, Metaphor Standard Taxonomies Evaluation and Customization Taxonomy in Context Infrastructure and Applications Conclusion. KAPS Group. KAPS Group Background
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Standard Taxonomies Tom Reamy Knowledge Architect KAPS Group tomr@kapsgroup.com
Agenda • Types of Taxonomies • Formal, Browse, Metaphor • Standard Taxonomies • Evaluation and Customization • Taxonomy in Context • Infrastructure and Applications • Conclusion
KAPS Group • KAPS Group Background • Knowledge Architecture Consultants • Intellectual infrastructure: • Content, People, Technology, Processes • Partners – Convera, Inxight, FAST, etc. • Search, CM, LMS, Categorization, Taxonomy Management • Taxonomies: Enterprise, Insurance, Biotech • Taxonomy customization
Types of Taxonomies • A hierarchy does not a taxonomy make • Thesaurus (BT, NT, Related Terms), Controlled Vocabulary • Catalog, Index, site map, Partonomy, Ontology, • Classification, Semantic Network • Knowledge Map, Topic Maps, Paradigm, Prototype • Variety of taxonomies, categorization, classification, etc. • Important to know the differences, when to use which • Use Encyclopedia to find a zebra named Joe in Kenya • Use a taxonomy to find a document titled Policy X in HR
Types of Taxonomies • Formal Taxonomy • Indexing, Concepts, Is-A-Kind-Of, Search • Linnaeus – Taxonomy of Life • Central Concept of Species • Aristotle – foundation of taxonomy • Class - Ordnance • Order – Fire Control System • Genus - Sights • Species – Gun Sights • Variety – Radar Gun Sights
Types of TaxonomiesStrengths and Weaknesses • Formal Taxonomy Strengths • Fixed Resource - Little or no maintenance • Communication – share ideas, build on others • Infrastructure Resource • Controlled vocabulary and keywords • Indexing – conceptual relationships • Weaknesses • Difficult to develop and customize • Don’t reflect user’s perspective • User’s have to adapt to language
Types of TaxonomiesStrengths and Weaknesses • Browse Taxonomy Strengths • Browse better than search • Context and discovery • Search and Browse better than either alone • Categorized Search – Context • Browse Taxonomy Weaknesses • Mix of Organization • Catalogs, Alphabetical listings, Inventories • Vocabulary and Nomenclature Issues • Difficult to maintain • Poor granularity and little relationship between parts. • Web Site unit of organization • No foundation for standards
Standard Taxonomies • Browse Taxonomy • No Standards, Design should reflect organization • Inter and Intra organization standards • Consistency • User centric, based on understanding of user • Usability to Cognitive Science • Monkey, Panda, Banana • Easy to develop, hard to maintain
Standard Taxonomies • Formal Taxonomies • Partonomy – Geography • Existing Standards • Scientific • Mesh, NAICS, etc. • Getty Art and Architecture • No inter-taxonomy standards • Facet Model – standard facets, custom selection of set of facets?
Taxonomy Evaluation • What makes a good Taxonomy? • Formal: Quality Metrics • Corpus, Coverage, Nomenclature, dependency • No mixed classes, noun forms, proper speciation • Bell Curve, balance of breath and depth • What makes a good Standard taxonomy? • Authority, popularity • Associations • Formal subject matter – science • Limited subject matter – wine, geography
Taxonomy Evaluation • Good Browse Taxonomy? • An understandable organization of content that enables people to find information and which supports knowledge discovery. • Creates a context within which facts are related • Find, identify, describe information, relations, context • Good Standard Browse Taxonomy? • Consistency – categorization & labels • Capture local variations – synonyms, is related
Taxonomy in Context:Limits of Standard Taxonomies • Life is messy, business content is messier • What is Life? is an easy question. • No single subject matter taxonomy • Need ontology and facets • No single company wide vocabulary • Specialist needs -- synsets • Multiple activities and varied users • Off the shelf taxonomies and customization
Taxonomy in ContextIntellectual Infrastructure • Knowledge Organization: Integration of Multiple Forms • Structured and unstructured, tacit and explicit • Metadata and taxonomies, people and communities • Subject matter, entities, activities, multiple views • Technology: Infrastructure and Applications • Enterprise Platforms: unstructured data management, CM with categorization, DAM, Portals, Collaboration, Text Mining • People and Processes • Infrastructure activities: taxonomies and analytics • Facilitation – Knowledge Transfer
Standard Taxonomy Solutions • Facet Model • Enterprise: Actors, Attributes, Events, Functions, Locations, Information Resources • Complex Topics: intersection of facets, facets and subject matter – Post coordination • What users are looking for and what documents are often about – China and Biotech, Pharma and Farms • Power of fuzzy relationships • Dynamic Classification • Combining both types of taxonomies
Conclusions • Standard Taxonomy Approaches • Get a good taxonomist! • Automatic Taxonomy Software and SME’s not the answer • Unusual hierarchy, uneven granularity, node names • Design Ontology – set of Facets • Find existing taxonomy and customize • Browse – consistency, internal standards, map to taxonomy of users • Design infrastructure solution – taxonomy in context • Metadata, search, CM, DAM, etc. • Combine browse and formal taxonomy