XplanaZine

It’s been a good week at the Living Taxonomy Project. We’ve had a strong show of interest from folks in the international community and received some nice encouragement and advice from respected edubloggers like George Siemens and Scott Leslie.

Next week, Stacy will be speaking with analysts from Forrester Research and Gartner and we are busy working on our presentations for those meetings. We’ll also be posting a new taxonomy next week — Film Studies — and then another one the last week in July. Stacy or I will be at the Merlot conference that week and hope to connect with many there.

But, definitely, the most gratifying thing has been the community participation we have already received at the LTP. Just as we knew would happen, community members have already started diving in and making suggestions for specific taxonomies. We have also started discussions with a number of groups about taking on “sponsorship” of different taxonomies (more on that next week).

For my part, I’ve been working on an article for LTP that outlines the connection between taxonomies (controlled vocabularies), folksonomies, and search engines. I hope to have this finished next week and will post to the LTP site then. As part of that paper, I have been working on a quadrant of variables that is designed to show which type of information management approach is most valuable for a particular project. This still needs tweaking but here’s where I am so far.

Information Management Quadrant

The Information Management Quadrant is based on four categories or conditions surrounding a person/group/organization and their information. Each of these categories has two defining variables.

• Content — This category describes what it is that is being tagged, sorted, or searched for. Content can be further defined as:
  • Homogeneous — The content is generally related to single topic or industry, or is related to multiple topics that are closely related or tied together by a common purpose;
  • Heterogeneous — The content is diverse and maps to many, unrelated topics or industries.
• Purpose – This category describes why content is being tagged, sorted, or searched for. Purpose can be further defined as:
  • Known — There is a clear (or single) and stated purpose for information management that articulates known present and future needs (as they are understood at the present);
  • Unknown — There is no clear or stated purpose for information management. Some present needs may be known but needs are mostly unanticipated.
• Action – This category describes the predominant current action generally associated with the content. Action can be further defined as:
  • Search — The primary action associated with the content is user-defined search;
  • Storage — The primary action associate with the content is user or group-defined storage.
• Audience — This category describes the intended “final” audience or end user for the content being managed. Audience can be further define as:
  • Private — The content is only or mostly intended for private or internal viewing. Often this means a more limited number of homogeneous users (with a more common or defined purpose);
  • Public — The content is intended for public viewing by an unlimited number of heterogeneous users.

The quadrant would look, roughly, something like the table below:

An example of the quadrant in use would be something like the following example:

Taxonomies are the most valuable information management option when:

• Content = Homogeneous
• Purpose = Known
• Action = Storage
• Audience = Private/Public

Hopefully, this brief outline describes the general idea behind the quadrant. I would really appreciate any feedback, constructive criticism etc.

This item is cross-posted at the Living Taxonomy Project blog.