As promised during the webinar, the correct link for the museum! You can search and browse a portion of the collection held in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. Browse around! Search, read, zoom - add tags! This is a site at which to have fun, learn new things, spark new thoughts.

The team at the museum have made great use of readily available technologies and user generated content to augment the records and formal taxonomies that existed at the museum. Sites such as Flickr, tools such as OpenSearch, and licensing and use models from Creative Commons are combined to provide access to the data by as wide a variety of users as possible - users who become potential visitors; potential patrons. The design and interaction models are simple and elegant; the search and browse mechanisms are powerful; the images and image manipulation tools allow you to see great detail and experience the pieces wonderfully from afar.

If you are so inclined, I highly recommend you read through the "About" tab, and follow the links from there to the papers and blogs about how they've built the site. It's an interesting read, and a great way to be inspired - yet again - by those serving in institutions that preserve and promote our global heritage.

View of Low Waterfall Over Rocks, Powerhouse Museum Collection, The Commons on Flickr

20 degrees, light snow, 8:00 on a Sunday morning….and I’m about to do a presentation and hopefully lead a discussion on taxonomy development and digital projects for the Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group at the ALA Midwinter conference . As I entered the area, there was only one other person and I thought that perhaps my worst fears had come true – that only the group chair and I would be present! Soon however, additional people began to arrive and by the time we wrapped up the presentation and discussion there were about 40 people present. My presentation covered definitions and examples of controlled vocabularies, from simple lists up to and including ontologies. Examples and pros and cons of each type were presented and discussed. The uses of controlled vocabularies in search and navigation were also presented and discussed. The presentation concluded with more in depth information on term structure, term relationships, notation and other general considerations when developing taxonomies and controlled vocabularies. The slide deck I used is embedded below and it is also available from the ALA conference wiki .

Following the presentation we had about a 30 minute discussion on aspects of the presentation as well as how we use and develop controlled vocabularies for clients in the Dow Jones Taxonomy Services group. There was a good discussion on the differences in the way libraries use vocabularies and do vocabulary development and the way commercial enterprises use controlled vocabularies and taxonomies. Thanks to all the attendees for your participation! please contact me with questions at laura.dorricott@dowjones.com

Please join us for Part 1 of a 3 part Webinar titled Discover the Semantic Web.

Date : Thursday, February 12, 2009
Times: 10:00 a.m.EST/ 7amPST OR 2:00 p.m. EST / 11am PST
Duration: 60 minutes

This webinar will focus on how organizations consume, digest, and share news and information. What we are seeing in the corporate space is that the Semantic Web is no longer 'ahead of its time' and therefore it has the potential to rapidly change how your organization manages, delivers, consumes, shares and produces content.

During Part I of this series you can learn how Semantic Web Technologies enable you to:

* Re-use valuable information to save costs in today's budget-cutting environment
* Facilitate easier collaboration and sharing of critical information across your business
* Increase search relevancy and surface the most valuable information needed to remain competitive

Christine Connors and myself will be conducting this free webinar and we welcome everyone who is interested in the subject to join us.

Who are we?

Christine Connors is the global director, semantic technology solutions for the Enterprise Media Group at Dow Jones and Company. In this position, she manages a worldwide team that is responsible for the development of taxonomies and metadata that are used to add value to Dow Jones news and financial information products, and a US-based team of software developers who support the Synaptica® software application. She also supports Dow Jones consulting practices, based in the Americas, Europe and Asia, which deliver end-to-end information access solutions based on taxonomy, metadata and semantic technologies.
You can learn more about Christine Connors or you can read some of her other blog posts on Synaptica Central .

I am the business development manager responsible for Dow Jones Taxonomy Services and Synaptica here at Dow Jones. I work with both small and large companies to deploy information strategies, including helping customers develop and manage their controlled vocabularies- from developing strategies and sharing best practices to doing custom taxonomy development.

More about me here or you can read some of my other blog posts on Synaptica Central or on my personal blog .

We all know that building controlled vocabularies in enterprise settings is not simply a nice (fun?) intellectual effort. The point is to deliver value to the enterprise, whether it’s aiding in realizing revenue or ensuring full utilization of knowledge assets. In “How to Build a High-Octane Taxonomy for ECM and Enterprise Search Systems” (Forrester Nov 2008 free with registration), Leslie Owens presents a strong discussion of exactly how to go about building that “taxonomy” for your enterprise.

First and foremost, you should never engage in a “taxonomy” project in a vacuum. Ultimately, it’s all about context and knowing that context! Owens echoes this belief. We work closely with our clients to first clearly define and document the business objectives and ensure the project’s objectives are aligned with the enterprise’s objectives. The work must be done within the context of a specific set of business objectives and goals. Then we work with our clients to identify the systems which will utilize the controlled vocabularies. What are their constraints? How will they process the information? How might they display the information and surface the controlled vocabularies for the users? Speaking of users, they are the third aspect of context which we have front of mind as we work with our clients to initiate these long-term efforts. Who are they, what is their level of knowledge about the content and its use, why are they using the systems to be enhanced, how do they do their work and how do they think about the content base(s), etc.

Owens presents a good, but academic, discussion regarding the techniques for building controlled vocabularies. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which techniques are employed or in what combination you use them as long as you’re effective and the outcome is a controlled vocabulary which can be deployed, maintained and re-used for long-term business value. In our experience, most engagements involve utilizing a hybrid of techniques in an iterative process. It’s not worth getting caught up in labeling the technique (even for those of us often referred to as “the word police”).

If you’re considering initiating a “taxonomy” program within your enterprise, or you’re already well down the road, we strongly recommend reading Owens’s report. You will glean good information to guide you in your process. One last thought I would leave you with; no matter how “simple” you think this effort is, it should not be undertaken believing it is a “once and done” project. You are initiating a long-term program which should always remain as an active component in your ECM, search, knowledge management, or whatever larger appropriate program.

[note:this post was originally posted on my personal blog ]

Very similar to the possible benefits of the Semantic Web in what i like to call the research 'finding' environment in corporate enterprises and perhaps one of the most illustrative examples of the value of the Semantic Web i have seen in a while, this post titled Semantic Web in Education by Jason Ohler a professor of Educational Technology and Distance Learning at the University of Alaska paints a illustrative picture of some of the values end-users/consumers can derive from the Semantic Web. Flip it from an education research environment that Olhler is addressing to an enterprise finding environment and you have an interesting use case for why enterprises should look closely at the promise of the semantic web.

"One vision of a well-developed semantic web includes a search feature that would return a multimedia report rather than a list of hits. The report would draw from many sources, including websites, articles from scientific repositories, chapters in textbooks, blog dialogue, speeches posted on YouTube, information stored on cell phones, gaming scenarios played out in virtual realities-anything appropriate that is accessible by the rules of Web 3.0. The report would consist of short sections that coalesce around knowledge areas that emerged naturally from your research, with keywords identified and listed conveniently off to one side as links.

The information in the report would be compared, contrasted, and collated in a basic way, presenting points of agreement and disagreement, and perhaps associating these with political positions or contrasting research. Because the web knows something about you, it also alerts you to local lectures on related topics, books you might want to read, TV programs available through your cable service, blog discussions you might find relevant, and even local groups you can contact that are also focused on this issue. Unlike a standard report, what you receive changes as the available information changes, and you might have wiki-like access to add to or edit it. And because you told your agent that this topic is a high priority, your cell phone will beep when a significant development occurs. After all, the semantic web will be highly inclusive, providing a common language for many kinds of media and technologies, including cell phones. The net result, ideally, is that you spend less time searching and sifting and more time absorbing, thinking, and participating."

Starting in February, Christine Connors and I will be conducting a three part Webinar titled 'Discover the Semantic Web' that will address some of these enterprise specific opportunities to leverage the Semantic Web.

Image|Flickr|AlexBarros