IWMW 2004: Taxonomy: The Science Of Classification (B3)

Taxonomy: The Science of
Classification
IWMW2004
Slide 1
Taxonomy: The Science of Classification
- using the library as a
metaphor to demystify the
process of portal taxonomy
development.

Classification
Slide 2
Why A Taxonomy?: Oracle
University Portal ~ Oracle10g AS
 Taxonomy: Oracle portal requirement
 Perhaps most crucial component of the portal
project
 Taxonomy not understood: perception
highly specialised technical mechanism
 Initial reaction buy in consultancy?
 Misconception: Taxonomy silo
 Taxonomy only required for portal

Classification
Slide 3
Why A Taxonomy?: Issues
Taxonomy concepts not understood by
colleagues – “We need one, how to we design
and build?”.
The late realisation that a taxonomy was
required to service other institutional
requirements like the FOI publication scheme
and ‘Records Management’.
Folly to build taxonomy focusing on Oracle
portal requirements – “What happens if we
change our portal platform?”.

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Slide 4
Our Backgrounds
 Chris Milne, Academic Librarian
 Information Retrieval / Classic texts
Sayers, W. C. B. 1975. Sayers’ manual of
classification for librarians. 5th
ed. London:
Deutsch
Rowley, J. E. 1987. Organising knowledge: an
introduction to information retrieval. Aldershot:
Gower.
Hunter, E. J. and Bakewell, K. G. B. 1983.
Cataloguing. 2nd
ed. London: Bingley.

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Our Backgrounds
 Dave MacCabe, IT
Specialist
 User requirements analysis
 Business analysis
 Software development
 Web development
 Database design

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Slide 6
Blended Approach
Taxonomy development at UAD will
 Use combination of Librarianship & IT skills
sets
Librarianship skills sets
 Information retrieval: designed to support
users information seeking behaviour
IT skills sets
 What can be achieved with technology?

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Workshop Outline
Generate a more rounded view, clearer
perspective of taxonomy development
Looking to share our experiences and
gather the experiences of others
We don’t have all the answers!

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Slide 8
 x 2 Surveys to ascertain:
 Range of skills sets available to portal /
taxonomy teams
 Business drivers for developing /
deploying taxonomies
 x 2 Presentations
 Taxonomy: theoretical background
 Information retrieval techniques related
to taxonomy development
Workshop Elements (1)

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Workshop Elements (2)
 x 3 Activities
 Discussion of survey results (x 2)
 Applying a taxonomy and meta-data to
fixed-term contract example materials
 General / concluding discussion on
project team skills sets and the use of
Library staff

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IWMW2004
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10
Skill Sets:
Ourselves, our teams and
our institutions.

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11
Useful Questions?
What skills to we have?
Do we think they are appropriate?
What are the institutional perceptions
of the skills required?
Is it a converged service project?
Will the team be supplemented by
external consultancy?

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IWMW2004
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12
Presentation:
The theoretical background to
taxonomies and metadata

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13
Aim
To set the scene for the key
activity, I’m going to try to sprint
down the road from basic
theoretical constructs to a
concrete portal example.

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14
What is a Taxonomy ?
A systematic way of classifying knowledge
A structure of concepts (hierarchical?)
A common language for sharing knowledge
An artificial, formal construct acting as a
symbolic model of an information domain
Examples
Linnaeus’ plant taxonomy
Organic compounds

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15
Dictionary Break
TAXONOMY
“[Taxonomy is] the science of
classification according to a
predetermined system used to
provide a conceptual framework
for discussion, analysis or
information retrieval.”
Ravid, Y. (2002)

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16
Dictionary Break
ONTOLOGIES
Descriptions of the meaning and
nature of things, a superset of
taxonomies – “a formal explicit
specification of a shared
conceptualization”KNOWLEDGE MAPS
Used for knowledge
representation – both visual and
conceptual

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17
Why have a Taxonomy ?
Essential for knowledge management
Coping with “infoglut”
Faster information retrieval and improved
productivity
Sharing of knowledge and comparison of
knowledge bases
and, of course, for us…
Content management for institutional portals

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18
In fact …
“A good taxonomy helps to inject
order into the chaos and anarchy
of a typical intranet or website.”

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Organisational Drivers
The costs, both financial and organizational, of
poor access to information
The requirement for ‘regulatory’ compliance (for
example Freedom of Information, Records
Management)
The requirement to manage the organization
effectively.
Higher levels of productivity in knowledge workers

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In fact …
“[taxonomies are] a strategic
imperative for any organization
looking to manage and exploit its
knowledge more effectively”

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Taxonomic Issues …
 “Hierarchical”
 “Key concepts”

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The FOI Scheme: A Hierarchy
Class Groups
1. GOVERNANCE
2. FINANCIAL RESOURCES
3. HUMAN RESOURCES
4. PHYSICAL RESOURCES
5. STUDENT ADMINISTRATION AND
SUPPORT
6. INFORMATION SERVICES
7. TEACHING AND LEARNING
8. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
9. EXTERNAL RELATIONS
Class Group Class
1. GOVERNANCE 1.1 Legal Framework
1.2 Governance Structure
1.3 How the institution is organized
1.4 Information on the Institutional Context
1.5 Management Structure

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23
Issues with Hierarchies
Hierarchy classification limitations
 Enforced Classification
 Scattering
 Matches “information seeking” behaviour?
Implicit navigation
 Drives development (e.g. Oracle “pages”, “tabs”)
 Matches “information seeking” behaviour?
Width .v. depth
 Seeking behaviour
 Don’t forget publishing behaviour!

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24
General Issues
 “Push” .v “Pull”.
 “Google thinking”.
 Management by exception
 Role-specific delivery

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Dictionary Break
METADATA
“meta-data (or "meta data") Data
about
data. In data processing, meta-data
is definitional data that provides
information about, or documentation
of, other data managed within an
application or environment.”
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2004 Denis Howe

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26
Metadata & Key Words

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27
Dictionary Break
THESAURUS
“Labelling and relating objects
and groups of objects with
appropriate words and concepts”
as an aid to “knowledge indexing
and retrieval”

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Student Coursework (1)

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Student Coursework (2)

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Key References ?
Many texts – very few offer any practical
advice just theoretical perspectives on the
knowledge management area.
Obtain practical advice from portal
development environment documentation.
MUST READ – Wyllie, J and Skyrme, D. J.
“Taxonomies: Frameworks for Corporate
Knowledge”, London: Ark Group, 2003.

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IWMW2004
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31
Taxonomy Project Drivers:
Or, “What are we trying to
achieve, and why?”

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32
Useful Questions?
Why do commercial organizations develop
taxonomies, and are there similarities are there
with HE?
Who are the information consumers (students,
staff, local business, general public, special
interest bodies)?
What are the real information needs and how do
they arise?
What technical infrastructure is being considered
and/or used: does this place limitations on, or help
the process of taxonomy development?

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IWMW2004
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33
Presentation:
Applying classification,
cataloguing and indexing
techniques to organise and
retrieve information within
portals

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34
Aim
Provide a clearer perspective on
the processes surrounding the
development of a portal
taxonomy, using the analogy of
classification, cataloguing and
indexing techniques as deployed
in libraries to manage
information

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35
The Problem
Taxonomy concepts initially not
understood by colleagues
 We need one, how to we design and build?
Reference document outlining “rules”
for taxonomy development
 Use Oracle9iAS Portal as Your Knowledge
Exchange

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36
Core Themes Identified
Primary Taxonomy: concerned with
 Visual presentation of information and services to users
 Navigation
 Logical arrangement, two ‘primary’ concerns
 How do we expect users to find, and retrieve information?
 How can the organisation of information, be designed in such a
way to support institutional objectives? e.g. developing deeper
engagement with the University
 Supermarket Taxonomy: designed to create zones, and protect
goods

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37
Virtual Taxonomy: concerned with
 Development of meta-data to support retrieval
via search-engine
 Building indexes, describing information and services
 Creation of an alternative approach to finding
and retrieving information, not supported by any
‘natural’ limitations within the Primary
Taxonomy

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Imperative: develop an understanding of users
information requirements and information seeking
behaviour
How will people look for content?
 How will people use content to support their jobs?
 How to people expect content to be organised and
described?
 What is the structure of the organisation?

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39
Role of Organising Content?
Organising on-line information attributed to
IT solutions
 Parallels with the role of a “Web Master” i.e.
technical skills set
Role of Librarianship incorporating
“established” Information Retrieval
techniques used for hundreds of years to
organise the complexities of library
collections worldwide frequently overlooked

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40
Classic Information Retrieval
Faceted / Non-faceted Classification
Pre-coordinate & Post-coordinate Indexing
Citation Order
Principle of Inversion
Cataloguing
Thesauri / Subject Headings
Automatic Indexing

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A Taster: Principle of Inversion
“In an analytico-synthetic classification, the
implementation of the Principle of Increasing
Concreteness requires that the facets in the facet
formula of a basic class should be in the
decreasing sequence of concreteness. If the
scheme has rounds of facets, the facets in each
round should be in the decreasing sequence of
concreteness”
S.R. Ranganathan's Prolegomena to Library Classification (2e) (1957).

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Taxonomy & Information
Retrieval Equivalents
Primary Taxonomy (equivalent to)
 Pre coordinated indexing
 Example: Dewey Decimal Classification
 Within portal: Predefined grouping of content and
services, users have a predefined path to follow to
find and retrieve information by virtue of what clicks
they have to make and [hypertext] links to follow

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43
Taxonomy & Information
Retrieval Equivalents
Virtual Taxonomy (equivalent to)
 Post coordinated indexing
 Example: Library Catalogue (OPAC not card)
 Within portal: User decides how to find and retrieve
information via the selection of keywords and index
terms, applied to a search engine

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44
Example: Library Taxonomy
Primary Taxonomy (i.e. How users see / approach
the physical library stock)
 Users approach Library stock via ‘collection’
 Level 1 Short Loans
 Level 2 Reference Materials / Law Lending stock
 Level 3 Lending Stock
 Level 4 Journals
 Each collection organised by subject, using Dewey
Decimal Classification
 Anticipates that users need to find materials based on
subject, with related items being found together
 Supports information retrieval by browsing

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45
Characteristics: Primary
Taxonomy
Supports users, logical subject approach to
retrieving information
Organisation by Dewey Decimal
Classification stable framework, adaptable
for new subject areas
 e.g. Computer Games

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Limitations: Primary
Taxonomy
Scattering
Classified works can only appear in one place
within a library
 Works organised by citation order
 i.e. order in which the various facets are presented in a
compound subject
 Medium – Period – Style - Country
 Leads to scattering works of related subject
 In this example items on Country will be scattered throughout
the collection

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Primary Taxonomy Will
Influence the physical design of the Portal
 Pages / Sub Pages, Regions and Tabs
are the tools available in Oracle 10G to
underpin a Primary Taxonomy
 Virtual Taxonomies can be implemented to
support user requirements not provided for in
the Primary Taxonomy

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More than One Taxonomy?
Library restricted to a single Primary
Taxonomy due to nature of physical stock
Electronic environment, Portal will support
multiple taxonomies
 This could depend on the user entering the
Portal e.g. different view for member of
academic staff, student, support staff

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Example: Library Taxonomy
Library Catalogue (OPAC) (Virtual Taxonomy)
 Supports alternative means of accessing materials in an
attempt to overcome the limitations of the Primary
Taxonomy i.e. search by:
 Author(s)
 Subject heading(s)
 Various facets that each item represents can be included, whereas
the Primary Taxonomy (Dewey classification) centres on primary
subject area
 Title
 Series

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Catalogue Search Indexes
Randle, Kevin D.
UFO crash at Roswell / -- New York : Avon 1998.
328p. ; 19cm
ISBN 03807-619-6-3 (pbk) : £6.99 : CIP entry (Jun.)
Unidentified flying objects.Unidentified flying objects
- Sighting and encounters - New Mexico -
Roswell.Unidentified flying objects - Censorship -
United States. I. Schmitt, Donald R. II. Title.

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Virtual Taxonomy ~ Catalogue
Meta-data equates to the Subject, Author, Title,
Series entries used within a library catalogues
Controlled search terms (vocabulary) to improve
recall
 E-commerce see Electronic Commerce
Alternative retrieval mechanism aiming to
overcome limitations of classification scheme
employed e.g. Author search

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Virtual Taxonomy
Meta-data
 Describing portal content via:
 Attributes
 Categories
 Perspectives
 Creating indexes for search engines in Oracle 10G,
providing an alternative ‘virtual’ taxonomy to
supplement the ‘primary’ taxonomy
Again, similar concept to the Library catalogue

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Taxonomy Design / Content
Analysis
Anticipated user behaviour i.e. who will use the
Portal and how will people expect to find and use
the Portal’s information and services
This can be identified via “content analysis” e.g.
how will students expect to find a past paper?
If students cannot ‘click’ their way to a past paper,
how can the Virtual taxonomy be used to quickly,
efficiently, intuitively provide the desired
information?

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Taxonomy Design / Content
Analysis
Is your Taxonomy required to support other
institutional objectives e.g. FOI, Records
Management?
How will this effect index design &
construction i.e. selection of meta-data?
 Index under document type related to FOI
publication scheme?

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Suggested Steps: Designing
UAD Portal Taxonomy
What do we need to organise?
 What is going into the Portal
 Content / Document Analysis
 FOI / Records Management functionality!
Decide how best to organise material
 Organisation will support design objective i.e.
deepening student engagement with the
University
 Efficient information retrieval(Logical groupings)

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Suggested Steps: Designing
UAD Portal Taxonomy
Identify gaps in the Primary Taxonomy
 Starting point to think about best approach to designing
the Virtual Taxonomy to support alternative paths for
our users
 Primary Taxonomy will scatter documents and services, how
will your meta-data / search engine approach bridge these
problems
 External examiners reports may be organised in the Primary
Taxonomy by School
 Other users may wish to see all these reports as a single group
 Meta-data element “document type” to support retrieval of all
external examiner reports

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Conclusions
Information retrieval techniques developed
to organise complexities of human
knowledge
Techniques applied to libraries and
specialised collections remain valid and can
be successfully applied to organise
knowledge within portals

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58
Taxonomy: the Science of
Classification
Opportunity to bring together the
combined skills sets of
‘Information Professionals’ and
‘Web developers’ to develop a
relatively inexpensive ‘in-house’
solution to taxonomy
development, minimising the
requirement to draw upon
external consultancy.

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IWMW2004
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59
Skill Sets:
Can “traditional”
information retrieval skills-
sets be usefully applied to
support taxonomy
creation?

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60
Useful Questions?
Have you previously considered using
librarians to support portal / taxonomy
development?
If not, would you now consider using
librarians to support portal / taxonomy?
Do “today’s” librarians retain these
“classic” information retrieval skills?

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Key Activity:
- Applying meta-data and
recognising relevant
information consumers

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Activity Topic
Deliberately “left field” so we can focus
on the process rather than the
information itself.
The use of fixed-term employment
contracts in higher education
institutions.

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Activity Organization
Part 1 – Technical Briefing
Part 2 – Background Information
Part 3 – Applying a taxonomy and
meta-data

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meta-data

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Part 1 – Technical Briefing
Following on from the mini-talks already
delivered, I want to pose a series of
questions that we need to address in Part
3 of this activity.
Useful to have these questions in mind
during the background details that follow.
Actually a good, “real world” example but
only because you’ll need to get involved in
minutiae across the institution.

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Regulatory Compliance
 the Freedom of Information Act
 the Data Protection Act
 the Disability Discrimination Act
?
How do we manage compliance
with :-

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Internal Information
Consumers
Who needs this content?
How will they use it?
How should it be delivered (”push” .v.”pull”)?
How do these information consumers look for
information?
How should you best organize content to meet
user requirements and institutional objectives?

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External Information
Consumers
Who will search for this content?
How will they use it?
How do these information seekers look for
information?
What will be the context of the search and
what constitutes related content?

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Information Lifecycle
How frequently do you anticipate it will
change?
How can we ensure appropriate
classification of updates?
How should the updated information be
delivered to internal and external seekers?

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Finally, the content…
Our example is the use of fixed-term
employment contracts.
Chris will now provide the relevant
background on this topic.

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IWMW2004
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Key Activity:

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Activity Topic
information itself.
institutions.

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meta-data

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meta-data

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Background
Significant concern as to the high degree of
use of FTCs within HE (40%)
 Sector Reviews of HE (Dearing, Bett)
 Funding Councils
 Trade Unions
HEIs instructed to reduce reliance of FTCs

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Legislation / Guidance
EC Fixed-term Work Directive
 1999/70/EC
UK SI: 2002 no 2034
JNCHES Guidance
 Agreed standard between University employers
association and recognised trade unions as to
use and management of FTCs within HE

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Issues
Clear evidence to suggest that HEIs remain
heavily reliant on use of FTCs
Introduction of legislation, JNCHES guidelines and
pressure from funding councils has not led to any
significant reduction in use
Culture of over dependence
 Contract research funding
 Blunt tool to avoid performance management

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Information
Typically HEIs require to improve information flow
re FTCs to improve
 Awareness of obligations as employers / managers
 Ensure employees aware of the protection now afforded
to them under law
 Remove culture of dependence
 Monitor use
 Demonstrate ethical HR policies to funding council

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Key Activity:

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Activity Topic
information itself.
institutions.

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meta-data

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meta-data

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Part 3 – Applying a Taxonomy
Group discussion.

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IWMW2004
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Final Discussion:
Project team skill sets and
the use of library staff.

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Learning Outcomes
A clearer perspective on the processes surrounding
the development of a portal taxonomy, using the
analogy of classification, cataloguing and indexing
techniques as deployed in libraries to manage
information
A realisation that the combined skills sets of
'information professionals' and 'Web developers' can
be brought together to develop a relatively
inexpensive 'in-house' solution to taxonomy
development minimising the requirement to draw
upon external consultancy

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86
Useful Questions?
Are we happy with the vocabulary
surrounding taxonomies and portals?
Are there key references?
Do we have the appropriate skill sets
available already in the information
management professions in our institution?

IWMW 2004: Taxonomy: The Science Of Classification (B3)

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