A discussion of the role of taxonomies in developing tools to organize and discover information about people. Presented by Bert Carelli as part of the Special Libraries Association’s “Leveraging Your Taxonomy” series.

1. Using Taxonomies to
Create People
Directories and Author
Networks
Bert Carelli, Vice President Business
Development
www.accessinn.com

2. Goals and Agenda
 Why is it important right now that we
develop better resources about people?
 What roles can taxonomies play in this
effort?
 What opportunities are being created for
knowledge discovery and collaboration?
 What broad initiatives and technologies
should we be aware of?

3. Access Innovations Background
 Founded 1978: more taxonomies built than any other
company worldwide
 Thought leaders and educators in taxonomy standards
 Data Harmony Software: field tested, battle hardened,
award winning software
"Cut search time 50%."
The Weather Channel
"7-fold productivity increase"
- ProQuest CSA

4. The Semantic Roadmap:
Knowledge Organization Systems
 Semantic network
 Ontology
 Thesaurus
 Taxonomy
 Controlled vocabulary
 Synonym set/ring
 Name authority file
 Uncontrolled list
•Unrelated Entities
•Ambiguity
•Linked Entities
•Contextual Specificity
•Simple
•Low Value
•Complex
•High value

5. The Web Transformed…
 Web 1.0 = Getting Content Online (over
120 million websites and growing)
 Web 2.0 = Getting People Online
Mobile Social

6. Facebook: 700 Million Users Projected for 2011 (Open-First)

7. Twitter: Over 9 Billion Updates per Month

8. Linkedin: Over 200 Million People
Searches per Month

9. A highly trusted source
Social technologies will boost the utility of this long-trusted source

10. Business Applications of Social Media
 Sharing ideas for innovation
 Co-developing new products or services
 Enabling customers to get help from other
customers
 Generating brand awareness and visibility
 Peer review
 Assisting the selling process by sharing
contacts in a community

11. Company or Member Profiles
User pastes or
uploads CV
Button to auto-
extract taxonomy
attributes
User Reviews
tagging for accuracy

12. One Person, Many Representations
VIAF: Virtual International
Authority File
http://viaf.org/viaf/95216565/

13. Creating an Author Authority Database
 Tag all articles in the repository with standard subjects
 Export author names, subjects, institutions, locations, etc.
 Disambiguate authors with the same or similar names

14. Author Data: View by Connections…

15. … or by location…

16. …Or in the Document itself:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000228.x001

17. Many Repositories for Names

18. VIAF: Virtual International
Authority File
http://viaf.org

20. Project VIVO
 Designed around linked data standards
Resource Description Framework (RDF)
 VIVO’s ontology integrates data from
human resource systems, grants
databases, faculty annual reporting
systems, and publication databases
 Free open-source software download:
http://vivo.sourceforge.net

21. Explore a research area
Focus the results
Locate the PI for a grantContact a researcher with the
desired expertise and research
activity
Detailed Profiles of Medical/BioMedical Researchers

22.  Data is structured in the form of “triples” as subject-
predicate-object.
 Concepts and their relationships use a shared ontology to
facilitate the harvesting of data from multiple sources.
Information stored as Resource Description Framework (RDF)
Jane
Smith
is member of
author of
has affiliations with
Dept. of
Genetic
s
College
of
Medicine
Journal
article
Book
chapter
Book
Genetics
Institute
Subject Predicate Object

23. Detailed Data Relationships
David Nelson
Mike Conlon
Biomedical Informatics
Gene Anderson
Clinical Translational
Science Institute (CTSI)
Ed Tech Magazine
Development of an Observational Instrument to
Measure Mother-Infant Separation Post Birth
has research area
is research area of
featured in
has position in
features
organization with
position for
has author
author of
organization with
position for
has position in
author of
has author
Inverse relationships are created
Connections among scientists illustrated
Current and accurate data revealed

24. Visualizations: co-author networks

25. 125 Participant Organizations
25
ORCID

26. ORCID
F67572010
Testing Possible Matching Algorithms:
• VIAF matching technology from OCLC
• Author Resolver from ProQuest
• Matching capability from OKKAM
Access Innovations Author Authority
26
ORCID Profile
Exchange

27. Integrating Identity into Publisher
Systems
• Confirm background and authenticity of submitting authors
Manuscript Submission
• Confirm background and authenticity of prospective reviewers and identify
potential conflicts of interest
Peer review
• Linking ORCID profiles with scholarly output enables disambiguation and
improves publisher decision-making.
Connection to publications and other works
• Integrating profile information into publishers social network systems
enhances value and stickiness of these services (e.g. Nature Networks)
Social networks

28. Questions?
Bert Carelli
Vice President, Business Development
Access Innovations / Data Harmony
Bert_carelli@accessinn.com
510-551-3784
Corporate Number: 505-998-0800