Taxonomies & folksonomies

Taxonomy and folksonomy
reference: Heather Hedden taxonomist /ontologist book- the accidental taxonomist-metadata strategies for web and internal content management

1. Taxonomy & F olksonomy Aparna S

2. Taxonomy Comes from G reek word Taxis – Arrangement Nomos – Science Carl Linnaeus, Father of taxonomy A set of classification principles. Classification of elements within domain. Categorization techniques Based on descriptive words and phrases .Codes, if any, Displays the hierachical structure of various terms . Terms within taxonomy are called nodes Reuse content. Improving the search result displayed. Used primarily in online/digital space. Parent/broader term, child/narrower term. Often tree structure. A well build taxonomy is part of foundation of the information architecture.

3. Where are taxonomies used? In indexing In search In content management systems In share point In mash ups In social networking sites An author tagging In web crawlers In filtering data Taxonomy in cataloguing & indexing The Earliest taxonomies were for classification. The leading controlled vocabularies for cataloguing books ALA Subject headings (1895) LCSH Subject heading list (1898) Sears List (1923) LCSH used see also reference for every kind of relationship(1985) LCSH still in simpler form was adopted by various periodical index publishers . H.W. Willson company, Information Access company(1970),ABI inform

4. Advantages: Used for articles, images, electronic files, paragraphs or sections of text if separated out as digital content units Involves assigning an item multiple taxonomy terms. Manually or automatically assigned to content items. Easily be revised and updated. Helps user to identify which content items they want. Make the information findable . Leverage information new ways Develop by site architecture, metadata schema, navigation and websites. Provide better online help . Helps user to search, organized resources. Use for the purpose of indexing. Limitation : Understood by few experts. Controlled and limiting. Subject terms as perceived by author. Unaccessed information .

5. Differences between taxonomy and thesauri A taxonomy has only hierarchical (broader-narrower) relationships between its terms. A thesaurus has both hierarchical and associative (related-term) relationships between terms. 2. A taxonomy has a top-down inverted tree structure A thesaurus does not necessarily have an over-arching hierarchical structure. 3. Direction

6. Different concepts regarding Taxonomy Business Taxonomy : Dealing with business functions and process. New trends in Taxonomy : search-based applications, auto classification, and knowledge graphs . Demand Taxonomy licensing and sources : Taxonomy Warehouse, search by subject, format from 330 organizations. Image Taxonomy :Index image with taxonomy terms. Standard for Taxonomy : no exist but for thesauri standard(guidelines – NISOZ39.19, Thesauri for information retrieval) Multilingual Taxonomies : provide the bridge between the user’s choice of words and the wording within the desired documents. Taxonomy merging Enterprise taxonomy : corporate taxonomy Taxonomy tested Ecommerce Taxonomist – career option

7. Different taxonomy List : Good for non complex issues. Tree structure : Show hierarchical relationship and horizontal ones. Display Cause effect relationships. Not work well when different communities use different categories. Hierarchies : Pyramid structure. Too rigid. Transition from one level to next is predictable and consistent. Poly hierarchies : De Button noted, in 1730 items, belongs more than one class. Accommodates topics that are complex visual representation. Hyperlink allow jumping between categories and cross references. A nodes may be repeated at more than one place within the taxonomy if it is multiple broader terms

8. Hierarchical Taxonomy

9. Facet Taxonomy Facet were introduced in 1932 by S. R. Ranganathan. Books to be classified five different categories which he called as facet. Each book is classified to five facets also known as mini taxonomies. Can be identified from different searching points. Taxonomy consist of multiple smaller facets That can be searched in combination of nodes one from each facet. Refine the set of products by use of facets. The facets are for characteristics that cut across multiple categories. Search engine and software adopted same principle. Matrices Best with well defined body of knowledge. Organized in 2D & 3D. Eg. Periodical table.

10. Hybrid taxonomy (Hierarchical & facet)

11. Folk – comman people Taxonomy Combination of folks and taxonomy and is also known as collaborative tagging and social indexing. Thomas vander wal created the term Folksonomy . “ User created bottom up categorical structure development with emergent thesaurus “ User-initiated classification systems. Popular on the web around 2004 as part of social software applications such as social bookmarking and photograph annotation. Begins with tagging labels called tags. Tagging : defining characteristics of Web 2.0 services. Some websites include tag clouds as a way to visualize tags Subject has to be accepted before being published. Folksonomy

12. Social tagging will add value to the services of information organizations by supporting socialization Enable the creation of navigational links from those tags to extend the search and give a foundation for organizing the information. Social Networking sites Good Reads.com :User defines “shelves” not Tags. social cataloguing site. User can create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs and discussions. Library Things : Personal cataloguing service, User define tags for books, search the catalogue Penn Tags : Social bookmarking Tool (University of Pennsylvania) Any object /document bookmarking for URLs Del.icio.us.com : Add site to your personal collection of links, categorized those sites with keywords, bookmark manager Flickr.com : Photo sharing and management site

13. Folksonomy - Good reads .com

14. Advantages Defines the users. Browsing made easier. People can see other people who are tagging the same thing. Cost saving because tagging taps into existing base of information. Grouping a topic in one place. Identify pictures Auto correct Cheaper than controlled vocabulary. Matches the real needs and languages. Reflect the trends up to date, can monitor change and popularity, dynamic Facilities work place democracy and distribution of management task Enhanced user experience and ease of resource discovery for global community Global user contributing to content creates global communities of library users. Community specific tag help more relevant searches.

15. Disadvantages Could lead to miscommunication or false presentation of data /identity. Lack of control over tagging. Privacy issue. Not aimed at target approach/ search Sometimes language is not precise enough Synonym control No hierarchical structure Lack of precision Lack of recall Susceptible to spam Future tagging Thank you!