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Start Marking Sense: Librarians, Semantics and the Enterprise Taxonomy
- 1. Start Making Sense: Librarians, Semantics and the Enterprise Taxonomy Gale K. Smith, MS VDOT Knowledge Management Division
- 2. With Librarians . . . An organized, accessible world of information . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Public_Library#mediaviewer/File:OdenplanBiblioteket.jpg 05/25/16 2
- 3. Without librarians . . . Chaos ensues http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1156973/Thousands-scramble-free-books-Amazon-supplier-abandons-wareho 05/25/16 3
- 4. 05/25/16 4 All I really need to know I learned in library school . . http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=librarian&qs=n&form=QBIR&pq=librarian&sc=8- 9&sp=&sk=#view=detail&id=C8661741C03AD02956FC6A40D78CB97C73324556&selectedIndex=5 4
- 5. The three most important things about information are: Access 05/25/16 5 • Source=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashafatcat/3544505541/ 09-may-12] |Date=2009-05-12 23:16 |Aut
- 6. Access User:Skylarstrickland [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 05/25/16 6
- 8. File:Card Division of the Library of Congress 3c18631u original.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Card_Division_of_the_Library_of_Congress_3c18631 05/25/16 8
- 9. The Weaknesses of Full-Text Searching Jeffrey Beall, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol.34, No.5, pp.438-44, Summer 2008 • True Synonyms • Variant Spellings • Shortened Forms (Acronyms) • Different Languages or Dialects • Obsolete Terms • True Homonyms • Disambiguation of Personal Names • False Cognates • Inability to search by facets • Clustering • Keyword stuffing (on Internet) • The Aboutness Problem • Figurative language • Word Lists • Abstract topics • The Incognito Problem • Search Terms Not in Resource • Searcher Doesn’t Know Term • Non-textual Resources • Difficult to search Paired Topics • Variability Among Search Engines • Lack of Standardization in Searching • Variability in Result Ranking • Indexing Differences 05/25/16 9
- 10. What does the Library have to offer the Business Enterprise? 05/25/16 10 Knowledge Management Through Search-Based Applications http://more.earley.com/video-lecture- knowledge-management-through-search-based- applications
- 11. The Office . . . .Then • It was manually intensive to create content • And to duplicate it-- photocopiers not widely used until the 1960’s • Dedicated job role of secretary/clerk 05/25/16 11
- 12. The Office . . . Now • Easy to create content • Digital has joined paper as a format, not replaced it– multiple versions and copies • Technology has provided access at your fingertips, and self-service is common 05/25/16 12
- 13. The Library . . . Then and Now 05/25/16 13
- 14. File Folder Model • Content has proliferated; Business is still using a “file folder model” • Does not scale up to enterprise level • Does not support findability • Folders are “opaque” • User perspective-- idiosyncratic and self- centered 05/25/16 14
- 15. Library Model • Extensible– accommodates growth • Scalable to high level • Supports findability via browse or search • Multiple access points • Granularity • Metadata is applied consistently, according to rules and standards 05/25/16 15
- 16. 05/25/16 16
Editor's Notes
- I am a librarian, by education and by inclination. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the “how to use your library degree outside of the library setting” options promoted by LIS schools and professional organizations. I have made the move, within my organization, from working in a library to working in knowledge management, charged with developing an enterprise level taxonomy and metadata schema for the agency intranet. At VDOT the library is integrated with the KM group, and the head of KM has, among other credentials, an MLS and work experience in libraries. I believe that Librarians possess the requisite skill set to make sense out of, or provide meaningful access to, the proliferation of information, data and content in today’s business environment.
- The public perception of librarians is that we create orderly and accessible information environments– libraries are the antithesis of slipshod, haphazard, random accumulation. . . Despite the quantity of stuff we collect, we are not hoarders.
- In a non-library world, information seekers may grasp at the first straw or sift through mountains of irrelevant information and still not find what they need. I can’t speak to whether information wants to be free, but it doesn’t want to be organized . . .
- And this is why we have libraries and librarians. Some of the concepts and principles that have come to mind as I’ve embarked on my new responsibilities are: Aboutness Sense making (Brenda Dervin) Recall and precision in search results Value of a surrogate The importance of access to information Have you heard the real estate axiom that the three most important things about a property are location, location and location? I vividly recall a library school professor who told our class that:
- If information cannot be accessed, it can’t be used. The interfaces have changed, but the core concept of access hasn’t-- especially multiple points of access, going back to the Author, Title and Subject catalog cards. Whatever your role or position is as a librarian– collection development, tech services, circ, reference– it’s all about access.
- When capturing and searching full text became feasible, it was suggested that there soon would be no need for the creation of surrogates such as catalog cards or even OPAC records requiring all that tedious mental and manual effort. – after all, what could be more powerful than every word of text being searchable?
- Full text searching does not obviate the need for the creation of surrogates, whether in the form of catalog cards, MARC records, or metadata entered in document properties. Well-structured and consistently applied metadata is still more powerful than full text search.
- Business organizations are struggling to manage large collections of information and content, and to deal with the complaints of dissatisfied users who can’t find what they need to do their work. The realization that technology alone is not enough, and that the library principles of classification and cataloging (taxonomy and metadata) are relevant, is starting to make inroads in the business environment. So how did Business get to this point?
- Let’s look at the business environment of 50 years ago. Content was created by a boss dictating a letter, memo or other document, limited multiple copies were created by using carbon paper, and often only the final version of a document would be retained. So content existed almost exclusively in print form, and someone was responsible for maintaining physical files in such a way that a particular document could be retrieved. This generally meant pulling the appropriate file from a file cabinet and manually leafing through it. Files might be maintained according to the one most obvious or relevant criteria--by date, personal name, or by client or customer.
- Creating content that lives forever is now ridiculously easy for anyone with access to a computer. Business Week magazine published an article in 1975 on the paperless “Office of the Future”– here we are 40 years later. Instead of the paperless environment that we were promised– we now have both paper and electronic copies, drafts and versions of what started as one document. And many of the functions of the “Mad Men” era secretary, who often worked for just one boss, have been taken over by technology and are now do-it-yourself– voicemail instead of written messages, email replacing memos and letters, and direct maintenance of your own schedule and calendars. Up to a point, the self-service approach works fine and saves money by reducing staff. What hasn’t transitioned well is the traditional business approach to managing information.
- Libraries are also dealing with an explosion in content, managing both electronic and print formats, and the trend toward self-service is evident is some library functions. Despite the difference in appearance between the old and new library, the underlying principles of library organization and the library focus on access are essentially unchanged—in fact, libraries were well-positioned to take advantage of the benefits of technology– especially the speed with which large quantities of information can be manipulated– precisely because they already had the concepts and tools in place.
- In the business world, it is very telling that we still use terminology based in the pre-digital environment– we have inboxes and send carbon copies of email, and the file folder was recreated electronically, and now shared drives function as our file cabinets. How many folders on how many file shares are there in an organization like VDOT? And who knows what’s in them? File and folder “properties” are technical metadata, like file size and type. Not access points. You don’t know what’s in them until you look, and there’s not yet an effective way to search them. Documents are stored in folders nested in folders nested in folders . . . Self-service in this setting means that people save and store files and documents in ways that make sense only to them; plus, there is no designated role, like a file clerk, who is charged with maintaining even a rudimentary retrieval system, or with weeding extraneous or outdated materials. Even moving to SharePoint has not changed the underlying approach and mindset
- Library classification systems are extensible– new items can be incorporated at the appropriate point Can have a few thousand or a few million items– system still works Browse with opportunity for serendipitous discovery, or search with relative precision Access points, access points, access points Granularity to the level that you need. Metadata is taken seriously, there are trained specialists who strive to apply terms consistently, according to rules and standards “Search algorithms are getting better, but they cannot infer human context and intent.” Quote from Seth Earley, a consultant who really does get the importance of combining technology with information science skills. I’ve
- I happened across this article, which combines elements of the Shannon-Weaver communication theory with elements of fuzzy logic.
- One of my new favorite terms for what I do is semantic defuzzification. Consultant Seth Earley states: “Search algorithms are getting better, but they do not infer human context and intent.” That human context will introduce semantic noise and fuzziness into the system, shown in the first yellow box. What librarians do better than any other profession is to semantically defuzzify and start making sense out of information and content. We’ve done it in libraries, and we can do it beyond the library doors as well.