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© Straits Knowledge 2007 From Taxonomies to Tagging www.straitsknowledge.com

From Taxonomies to Tagging: developing taxonomy strategies that are appropriate

to your goals

Patrick Lambe

© Straits Knowledge 2007 www.straitsknowledge.comFrom Taxonomies to Tagging

AgendaTAXONOMY FORMS1. Defining our terms2. Different taxonomy forms3. Where tagging fits in4. Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are

they the optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging?

TAXONOMY OBJECTIVES1. Framework for identifying your objectives2. Different objectives mean different forms3. Case studies4. Discussion: taxonomy strategies for scenarios from your

organisations


DefinitionsOrganisational Effectiveness: the ability to set and achieve

organisational goals within target timeframes at a competitive cost and effort; the ability to respond appropriately to emerging risks and opportunities in the environment

Taxonomy work supports organisational effectiveness by providing:

• Consistency - especially in customer facing processes• Coordination - especially for minimising errors• Compliance - for facilitating accountability• Cost Management – by avoiding re-work and redundancy• Control - for ensuring timely and relevant decisions, especially

to meet risks and opportunities in the environment


DefinitionsTaxonomy - Taxis + Nomos - Customary ways of arranging

things Classification scheme Semantic Maps a knowledge domain for human navigation

Taxonomy work - the activities involved in constructing taxonomies Uncovering natural ways of organising Negotiating common vocabularies Representing the domain in a way that supports user

needs and purposes


What is a Taxonomy?


ListsHave a single topic or organising principleBuilding block for taxonomy


TreeA collection of listsEach level should be subdivided on the same principleExample Relationships:• Commonality in attributes or purpose (eg motivational factors,

competencies required for jobs, engineers in my firm)• Collocation (eg living room furniture, people in my

department)• Sequence (eg project startup activities, regular duties, activity

cycles)• Chaining (eg cause and effect chains,

stages in a manufacturing process)• Genealogy (eg parent-child

relationships)• Gradients in attributes (eg from

Private to General, from tall to short)


Trees and cognitionGeorge Miller 1956 - “magic number” of 7+/-2• the span of attention – how many things we can pay attention

to at any given time• ‘immediate memory’ (short term memory)• the number of categories that could be discriminated in any

environment

Cognitive coping strategies: • chunking• tracking multiple

attributes• [long term memory]Miller, George A., 1956 ‘The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information’ The Psychological Review vol.63 pp.81-97


Tree


TreeHeuristics for tree development• To support chunking and familiarity use “natural

associations” and “natural vocabularies”• Top-down development does NOT do this• Remove ambiguity and uncertainty, enhance

predictability (eg duplicate terms in different places, imprecise language, inconsistencies)

• For deep trees you need extraneous familiarity mechanisms – eg an established professional vocabulary- OR use Facets ! (ie tracking multiple attributes


HierarchyA tree following strict rules of construction• Inclusiveness – the top category “includes” all subordinate categories in the

tree• Relational consistency – the kind of relationship between each level in the

hierarchy is exactly the same relationship • Inheritance – subordinate categories in a hierarchy inherit all of the

attributes of superordinate categories, which makes it easier to focus just on the differentiating attributes and makes hierarchical taxonomies very economical to use – by knowing which branch of the tree we are in we can already say a lot about anything we find in that branch

• Mutual exclusivity – an entity can belong in one and only one class which is why this strict sense of hierarchy is so attractive – it eliminates ambiguity


MatrixFramework to classify in 2 or 3 dimensions• Each dimension may be a separate tree or list• Dimensions are orthogonal – mutually exclusive


Matrix


FacetsMultiple category listsor treesFacets are orthogonal – mutually exclusive


Controlled VocabularyList of all the authorised terms in your

taxonomy• Admission of new terms is ‘controlled’• Metadata schemas refer to controlled vocabulary lists (pick

lists) to ensure consistency of metadata


ThesaurusDictionary of all the authorised terms in your

taxonomy•Relationships between terms is expressed (broader, narrower, related terms)•Alternate, non-authorised terms point to authorised terms


FolksonomyAggregated collection of tags on socially exposed

content, where tags are uncontrolled and contributed by individuals principally for self-interested retrieval

Tag selection may be influenced by tag cloudsTag selection may be influenced by the desire for

displayHigh ambiguity and variabilityOn large content collections produces rich serendipity


Folksonomy


OntologyA semantic system of concept-relationship-concept

strings, expressing relationships of any kind between concepts

• “Thesaurus on jetfuel”• Used to help machines make useful links between concepts,

taxonomies, controlled vocabularies


AgendaTAXONOMY FORMS1. Defining our terms2. Different taxonomy forms3. Where tagging fits in4. Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the

optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging?


organisations


Our Environments


What Taxonomies Do


Structure & Organize Smoother and more efficient workflow, fewer

errors, better reuse of information and knowledge within the designated area of work

Institute of Technical Education - tree


Common Ground Better workgroup coordination, better reuse

of knowledge and information, faster retrieval of information and knowledge assets within workgroups

Cabot Corporation - facets


Boundary Spanning Better leverage of knowledge and information

assets across workgroups, fewer duplications, conflicts and re-work instances, better cross-organization coordination

Dept of Homeland Security - thesaurus building


Sensemaking & Discovery Greater confidence in decision-making,

consensus-building and communications across specialist or decision-making teams, greater ability to spot opportunities and risks, enhanced innovation capability

Unilever Research - “disposable taxonomies”


Taxonomy Strategies

TAGGINGTAGGING


AgendaTAXONOMY FORMS1. Defining our terms2. Different taxonomy forms3. Where tagging fits in4. Discussion: which taxonomy forms are you using now? Are they the

optimal forms? Do you see any opportunities for using tagging?


organisations

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