Knowledge

Earley & Associates offers access to articles and research reports that will help you learn basic concepts, identify best practices, understand requirements and be more successful in your content management, taxonomy, or search projects.

Recent Articles


Keeping SharePoint from Becoming an Information Shantytown This article was published on August 15, 2012 at DocumentMedia.com. SharePoint is a near-ubiquitous platform for content and document management. In order to get the most from the platform, it's important to *manage* design, deployment and operationalization *intentionally*.
KMWorld Whitepaper: Intelligent Search—Making the Most of Metadata This article appeared in the KMWorld May 2012 WhitePaper, Best Practices in Intelligent Search. To receive KMWorld content, including this Whitepaper visit KMWorld.com. Search is a conversation. If you ask me a question and I don’t understand, I can ask you for more information. With time you learn more about my interests, and can give better answers. Well-designed, intelligent search systems can do the same. We can facilitate this dialog by addressing three critical requirements for effective search. These are: Search needs to feel like navigation Search needs to be personal Search needs to be adaptive, improving over time 1. Search needs to feel like navigation People find answers through haphazard and chaotic processes. Are you a searcher or a browser? It really depends. Most people shift perspectives between the two modes. We search when we know what we want and are trying to retrieve something. We browse when we don’t know what we want and need to discover knowledge. Navigational structures can teach us about available content, but we tend to shift back and forth between retrieval and discovery. Most consumers are now very familiar with faceted navigation. Search terms are part of the left navigation. When you click on a particular size, color, or brand, the system executes a query. A relevant result set is returned. The user can also see how many documents that contain each term are in the collection. Search terms that make no sense or that would lead to zero results fall off the list, so users will not go down blind alleys.
Leveraging Industry Standards to Create a Compelling Web Presence This article, by Jeannine Bartlett and Seth Earley, was published on RetailOnlineIntegration.com on June 29, 2011. The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. They're valuable and are used throughout the web development process. Certainly the web is comprised entirely of standards, from HTTP to HTML, web services, transaction processes, linked data processes and new methods of sharing information across shopping channels like Milo.

Keeping SharePoint from Becoming an Information Shantytown

This article was published on August 15, 2012 at DocumentMedia.com.

SharePoint is a near-ubiquitous platform for content and document management. In order to get the most from the platform, it's important to manage design, deployment and operationalization intentionally.

KMWorld Whitepaper: Intelligent Search—Making the Most of Metadata

This article appeared in the KMWorld May 2012 WhitePaper, Best Practices in Intelligent Search. To receive KMWorld content, including this Whitepaper visit KMWorld.com.

Search is a conversation. If you ask me a question and I don’t understand, I can ask you for more information. With time you learn more about my interests, and can give better answers. Well-designed, intelligent search systems can do the same. We can facilitate this dialog by addressing three critical requirements for effective search. These are:

Search needs to feel like navigation
Search needs to be personal
Search needs to be adaptive, improving over time

1. Search needs to feel like navigation

People find answers through haphazard and chaotic processes. Are you a searcher or a browser? It really depends. Most people shift perspectives between the two modes. We search when we know what we want and are trying to retrieve something. We browse when we don’t know what we want and need to discover knowledge. Navigational structures can teach us about available content, but we tend to shift back and forth between retrieval and discovery.

Most consumers are now very familiar with faceted navigation. Search terms are part of the left navigation. When you click on a particular size, color, or brand, the system executes a query. A relevant result set is returned. The user can also see how many documents that contain each term are in the collection. Search terms that make no sense or that would lead to zero results fall off the list, so users will not go down blind alleys.

Leveraging Industry Standards to Create a Compelling Web Presence

This article, by Jeannine Bartlett and Seth Earley, was published on RetailOnlineIntegration.com on June 29, 2011.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. They're valuable and are used throughout the web development process. Certainly the web is comprised entirely of standards, from HTTP to HTML, web services, transaction processes, linked data processes and new methods of sharing information across shopping channels like Milo.