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Description:
This call included presentations by three guest speakers: Bill Ives (an independent consultant and writer of the blog Portals and KM), Rashmi Sinha (founding principal Uzanto), and Jim Smallwood (lead Information Systems Engineer at the MITRE Corp.).
Tagging: Chaos vs. Control
Seth Earley, Earley & Associates, Inc.
Seth Earley’s introductory presentation focused on comparing formal taxonomies and social tagging. Formal taxonomies or controlled vocabularies are created by a small group in a controlled process and are applied to the navigational structure, whereas in social tagging anyone to apply any keyword to a piece of content. Both the controlled vocabularies of taxonomies and the uncontrolled vocabularies of social tagging have their own challenges. In either case, tagging depends on the context. Ambiguous language impedes functioning of networks. In different processes different degrees of structure are more appropriate.
Tagging, when part of a large, complex system, can contribute to the emergence of knowledge. But tagging alone is not sufficient. Intelligence emerges between chaos and control, and the ideal balance between both is needed. Seth presented diagrams on the continuum between a system of chaos and of control in vocabulary and content management.
Seth explained the role of tags in taxonomies and the role of the network/community in tagging and taxonomies. The methods of social tagging and taxonomies are each appropriate in different contexts, and it is not simply an “either…or” choice.
Enterprise Social Bookmarking
Bill Ives
Steve started by describing the most important idea of topic maps: one virtual location for all things relating to a topic. It can be accessed from many different places but the idea is that once you get there, everything you need is there.
He introduced the concept that topic maps act as “wormholes” to connect different universes. The different universes are the collection of terms that one group may have and want to connect to another group’s collection of terms. The term collections are linked together by a common topic. The topic maps are means by which you can traverse the universes and find content that is related yet given a different set of metadata. The relationships and associations between topics are what provide the appropriate context for focused searches.
He then launched into a series of examples of topic maps in current use, including the IRS, the US Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, the Atlas development process, municipal portals, US Department of Energy, Dutch Tax and Customs, and the German Resource Center for Genome Research.
He concluded his talk by encouraging people to attend the topic maps research and applications conference (http://www.tmra.de).
Social tagging - Some observations & design principles
Rashmi Sinha, Uzanto
Rashmi Sinha’s presentation covered differences between tagging and categorization, social systems formed by tagging, design principles, and issues in findability.
Tagging is simpler than digital categorization, and it tends to be nonhierarchical and nonexclusive. There is also the social aspect of tagging, which makes it popular. This involves aggregation across people, watching trends and concepts, fining out what is similar others, and finding out what a group thinks. It can be a passive social experience.
Rashmi mentioned some weaknesses of tag-based social systems, such as biases, and variations in knowledge level, degree that it is used. She then covered issues in designing tagging systems. It needs to by personally useful, have identified relationships between the personal and social, have a porous boundary between the public and private, among other issues. Finally, Rahsmi discussed ways to get people to create better tags.
Social Bookmarking on a Corporate Intranet
Jim Smallwood, MITRE Corp.
Jim Smallwood’s presentation, based on a paper, presented a summary of a 6-month pilot project in social bookmarking called Onomi (shortened from both folksonomy and taxonomy) at the MITRE Corporation. To share and disseminate information in an R&D organization is important, and it is hoped that social bookmarking will facilitate the process. The Onomi project involves different levels of participation: a core group creates the bookmarks, and a larger group uses it.
The goals include fostering new communities, enhancing additional information sharing, integrating Onomi tags with other tagging efforts, and leveraging a folksonomy to support the existing formal corporate taxonomy.
Jim explained the design and development and the bookmark structure. The system also needs publicizing/promoting, and this has been done by using banner ads on Intranet.