ASIST

Taxonomy and Metadata Strategies for Effective Content Management

There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo like the word "taxonomy" that is being thrown around to describe how to manage so-called unstructured content like business documents, web site pages, and old fashioned technical reports and articles. On the one hand, we want to remember what we already know about how to create a useful core catalog record to describe a content object so it can be found again later when needed. On the other hand, there are some bad habits and obsolete ideas like inverted file indexes that we need to get beyond. This talk is about what we have seen in dozens of applied information management projects over the past few years, and how you can take advantage of what you already know to solve big problems like these in your own organizations.

The Linguistic Foundation of Labeling

A discussion of why to employ principle-based information architecture.

Content Management and Information Architecture

Content management is information architecture writ large.

Content Management is the Infrastructure of eBusiness

The basic nature of commerce has not changed but our ability to communicate quickly, widely, and deeply has. This document explores the changes and challenges that these new abilities bring to the conduct of business for all organizations. eBusiness, I contend, is the process of delivering any part of your business to any audience wherever they are.

Content Management Market: What You Really Need to Know

Content management (CM) has been on the short list of initiatives for many organizations the past few years. The proliferation of Web-based content on corporate intranets, extranets and Web pages has provided a daunting array of challenges. Organizations must insure that posted information is relevant, authentic and appropriate. And, if you listen to all the analyst firms the industry numbers would bear this out.

Data Collection for Controlled Vocabulary Interoperability: Dublin Core Audience Element

This paper outlines the assumptions, process and results of a pilot study of issues of interoperability among a set of seven existing controlled vocabulary schemes that make statements about the audience of an educational resource.

Fulfilling the Promise of Content Management

The Web explosion brought with it the proliferation of published content and the heightened need for content management (CM). Before that CM lived primarily in the publishing industry, where it never truly fulfilled its promise. Now that the 'dot-com' hysteria has settled CM has become a focal point again as mature, more traditional enterprises from all industries tune their sites – Internet, intranet and extranet.

If This Is Information Architecture, I Need a Plumber!

The validity of the term architecture for information work has been the source of some contention among both IAs and traditional architects. I have been forcefully reminded in recent weeks, through my dependence on information technology, just how limited the architecture of information spaces can be compared to the physical structures of our world. Just as a problem with the plumbing or the roof of your home tends to grab your attention and demand resolution, computers in their various forms can make demands on users that stretch the patience and emotional stability of even the most sanguine.

Information Architects and Their Central Role in Content Management

The process of content management begins when an organization comes to the realization that it needs a system to manage content. While the interpretation of the term content management (CM) can be as simple as a set of guidelines for organizing and maintaining content, more typically today it means a sophisticated software-based system. A full-featured content management system (CMS) takes content from inception to publication and does so in a way that provides for maximum content accessibility and reuse and easy, timely, accurate maintenance of the content base.

Knowledge Management: The Collaboration Thread

Knowledge management is a thick web of themes from a variety of professional disciplines. The field is populated with people who resonate with the ideas first articulated by Larry Prusak and Tom Davenport, Tom Stewart, Carla O'Dell and others. "Getting the right information to the right people at the right time." Isn't that what information architecture and the information sciences are all about? "Leveraging the intellectual capital of the organization." Isn't that HR turf? "Harvest and refine reusable intellectual artifacts." Hello? Are there any technical writers out there? "It's about connecting people with people and supporting them with technology." Does anybody know that research in computer-supported cooperative work began in 1984?

A Knowledge Network Constructed by Integrating Classification, Thesaurus and Metadata in a Digital Library

Knowledge management in digital libraries is a universal problem. Keyword-based searching is applied everywhere no matter whether the resources are indexed databases or full-text Web pages. In keyword matching, the valuable content description and indexing of the metadata, such as the subject descriptors and the classification notations, are merely treated as common keywords to be matched with the user query. Without the support of vocabulary control tools, such as classification systems and thesauri, the intelligent labor of content analysis, description and indexing in metadata production are seriously wasted.

Metadata Generation: Processes, People and Tools

Metadata generation is the act of creating or producing metadata. Generating good quality metadata in an efficient manner is essential for organizing and making accessible the growing number of rich resources available on the Web. The success of digital libraries, the sustenance of interoperability – as promoted by the Open Archives Initiative – and the evolution of Semantic Web all rely on efficient metadata generation. This article sketches a metadata generation framework that involves processes, people and tools. It also presents selected research initiatives and highlights the goals of the Metadata Generation Research Project.

New Metadata Standards for Digital Resources: MODS and METS

Metadata has taken on a new look with the advent of XML and digital resources. XML provides a new versatile structure for tagging and packaging metadata as the rapid proliferation of digital resources demands both rapidly produced descriptive data and the encoding of more types of metadata. Two emerging standards are attempting to harness these developments for library needs. The first is the Metadata Object and Description Schema (MODS), a MARC-compatible XML schema for encoding descriptive data. The second standard is the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), a highly flexible XML schema for packaging the descriptive metadata and various other important types of metadata needed to assure the use and preservation of digital resources.

Process of Knowledge Building in Educational Departments

In an educational department members are both drowning in information and craving knowledge. The department's information base is either scattered or unclassified. The business world understood this scenario and has brought a change to their knowledge infrastructure by including knowledge management (KM) systems. Educational departments, too, need to rethink their knowledge organization strategies. Therefore, a conversion from information to knowledge becomes imperative.

Scientific Collaboratories: Evaluating their Potential

The evaluation of scientific collaboratories has lagged behind their development. So few evaluations of scientific collaboratories exist that fundamental questions regarding their potential have yet to be answered: Can distributed scientific research produce high quality results? Do the capabilities afforded by collaboratories outweigh their disadvantages from scientists' perspectives? How does the scientific process change in the context of a collaboratory?

Understanding Content Management

If you have previously heard about content management (CM) it is most likely because you are connected to a large Web development project. Today that is where most of the interest and activity are. When the Web moved past small informally designed sites and into large, rapidly changing sites, the need for strong management tools became pressing. Product companies moved in to address this need and called their offerings content management systems (CMS). If your only problem is to create and maintain a large website, you have reason enough to desire the strict structure and formal procedures of a CMS. Such a system helps you get and stay organized so that your site can grow and change quickly while maintaining high quality. The Web, however, is simply one of many outlets for information that organizations need to manage. And when the amount of information sharing between these outlets grows, the desire for an organized approach becomes an absolute need.

ASIS Special Interest Group: Information Architecture

SIG-IA is guided by an ethic of inclusion, in which the full range of participants - from those who are self-taught to those with considerable academic training or practical experience - feel comfortable helping one another develop the professional practice of information architecture.

SIGIA-L: SIG Information Architecture

A mailing list for discussion of information architecture.

SIGIA-L Mail Archives

This is the archive for the SIGIA-L@asis.org mailing list.

Complexity In Indexing Systems -- Abandonment And Failure: Implications For Organizing The Internet

The past hundred years have seen the development of numerous systems for the structured representation of knowledge and information, including hierarchical classification systems with notation as well as alphabetical indexing systems with sophisticated features for the representation of term relationships. The reasons for the lack of widespread adoption of these systems, particularly in the United States, are discussed. The suggested structure for indexing the Internet or other large electronic collections of documents is based on that of book indexes: specific headings with coined modifications.

The American Society for Information Science and Technology

ASIST provides the people, programs and publications that keep your career moving forward. Whether you need to improve your productivity through better information retrieval, satisfy the information needs of your clients and constiuents, or need to understand or affect information policies, ASIST can help you address all of these diverse needs.