Faceted Navigation of User-Generated Metadata (Calit2 Rescue Seminar Series 2006)

Faceted Navigation of User-Generated

Metadata

Faceted Navigation of User-Generated

Metadata

Bradley P. AllenFounder & CTO

Siderean Software, Inc.

Calit2 2006 Rescue Seminar Series, UC Irvine, July 28th 2006

Bradley P. AllenFounder & CTO

Siderean Software, Inc.

Calit2 2006 Rescue Seminar Series, UC Irvine, July 28th 2006

Copyright © 2001-2006 Siderean Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

When search fails

RAWLSTON

Here's a man who might have been President. He's been loved and hated and talked about as much as any man in our time - but when he comes to die, he's got something on his mind called "Rosebud." What does that mean?

GIRL

What about Rosebud? Don't you think that explains anything?

THOMPSON

No, I don't. Not much anyway. Charles Foster Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get or lost. No, I don't think it explains anything. I don't think any word explains a man's life. No - I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle - a missing piece.

RAYMOND

Throw that junk in, too.

Camera travels to the pile that he has indicated. It is mostly bits of broken packing cases, excelsior, etc. The sled is on top of the pile. As camera comes close, it shows the faded rosebud and, though the letters are faded, unmistakably the word "ROSEBUD" across it. The laborer drops his shovel, takes the sled in his hand and throws it into the furnace. The flames start to devour it.


When search fails


Navigation vs. search

• Navigation answers two key questions– Where am I?– How do I get to where I want to go from here?

• Search doesn’t


• Facets tell you where you are

• Tags tell you how to move forward

Facets and tags: the basis of faceted navigation• Tags are metadata describing asset,

subject, usage and relational properties of digital assets

– Title: “Bleak House”

– Creator: “Dickens, Charles”• Facets are metadata attribute whose

values form a near-orthogonal set of controlled vocabularies, together forming a coordinate system

– Subject: Arsenic, Antimony

– Location: World > U.S. > California >

Pasadena

• Rooted in classification research in

library science

• Pioneering implementations by

Marti Hearst at Berkeley


Faceted navigation in the enterprise

Vertical Strong identified application fit

Metadata Adopting metadata technologies

Business users

E-Commerce Search and browse catalogs of products

and services, consumer-generated

information

Product catalogs, customer reviews, customer service data, advertising

Pervasive adoption of XML standards for

moving product and customer data across

value chains

Consumers, marketers

Federal Government Search, analyze and monitor complex,

dynamic intelligence, project and problem information across organizations and

projects (Columbia, Iraq, 9/11)

Scads of all types, with unstructured information often

preprocessed to boot

Commitment to RDF/OWL as solution

for cross-agency interoperability,

actively using RSS

Intelligence analysts, systems engineers

Financial Services Search, analyze and monitor dynamic

financial and market data, 360-degree view

of clients

News feeds, financial DBs, market data,

client data

Adoption of RSS for market intelligence

and content delivery emerging

Traders, industry analysts, investment

bankers


Metadata about data and content

is aggregated

Building a faceted navigation application (in Seamark)

Transformed into a unified information architecture expressed in RDF/OWL

Term

Event

Person

PlaceText

Analyzed to generate an

application profile for faceted

navigation of the aggregated metadata

Presented as an end-user navigation application


Case study: Environmental Health News (EHN)• Aggregating content

from hundreds of Web pages daily

• Adding value at the metadata level to the Web at large for a focused community of interest– Policy makers– Activists– Researchers


Case study: NASA JPL

• Aggregating multiple content repositories and structured trouble ticket databases

• Using corporate vocabulary for high precision access

• Providing access and discovery across all project information for managers and engineers

• Implemented in weeks


Faceted navigation requires metadata

• Faceted navigation depends on metadata

• This metadata has traditionally come from– Relational databases– Content repositories– Labor-intensive manual processes


Users can be a source of metadata

• Faceted navigation creates a framework to bridge the gap between metadata and the user– Exploit implicit (usage) and explicit (subject)

user-generated metadata to reduce labor costs of the repository

– Leverage the metadata which is at hand in increasing amounts on the Web

• RSS, FOAF, SKOS, etc.


Example: user tagging

• User tagging is massively collaborative subject indexing with uncontrolled vocabularies– A new point on the metadata cost/value continuum

pioneered by del.icio.us, Flickr

• How can this play with traditional subject indexing?– Folksonomies can make taxonomies more responsive– Taxonomies can make folksonomies more

responsible


fac.etio.us

• Aggregating feeds from del.icio.us social bookmarking site

– 105 Web pages

– 104 tags

– 104 contributors

– 104 originating sites

• Combining user tagging with faceted navigation

– “In 3 clicks, I drilled down through 9700+ sites, to a more specific set of 98 things, down to one I found useful.”

– “… the most comprehensive tool for searching the database of del.icio.us.”


fac.etio.us


Faceted navigation + tagging


Bridging the gap between folksonomies and taxonomies• Reduce/eliminate lexical variation

– Merge variants into a single concept using skos:prefLabel and skos:altLabel

• Relate tags to terms and other tags– Tag the tags with categories

– Place tags in time and space

– Tags are related to other tags through shared skos:subjectOf relationships with items

• Compensate for ambiguous tags with term indexing– Index items tagged with ambiguous tags with unambiguous terms based

on context (e.g. the tag “SF”)• Allow users to exploit tags and terms concurrently


Reduce/eliminate lexical variation (before)

ConceptScheme1 (Folksonomy)Resources

skos:subject

skos:subject

skos:prefLabel

skos:prefLabel

“Blogs”

“Blog”


Reduce/eliminate lexical variation (after)


skos:subject

skos:subject

skos:subject

skos:prefLabel

skos:altLabel

“Blog”

“Blogs”



skos:subject

skos:subject

skos:prefLabel

skos:altLabel

“Blog”

“Blogs”

ConceptScheme2 (Taxonomy)

Relate tags to terms


skos:exactMatch

“Weblog”



skos:subject

skos:subject

skos:prefLabel

skos:altLabel

“Blog”

“Blogs”


Compensate for ambiguous tags with term indexing


skos:exactMatch

“Weblog”

skos:subject

skos:subject


fac.etio.us


User-generated metadata: the value chain

• Publishers

– User-generated metadata increases

the value of core content and data

offerings

• Contributors (enthusiasts, editors,

remixers, librarians)

– Tools for remixing, tagging, annotating

and playlisting content and data

enhance value at the metadata level

• Consumers

– More navigable rich data and content

• Advertisers

– Higher-yield ads based on paid

navigation rather than paid search

PublishersContributor

s

Advertisers

Consumers

Tags, attention

Ads and links

Tags and leads

Tags,

facets and remixes

Digital assets

Tags and facets

Tags, attention

Digital

assets


Questions

• Where else can we end up on the user metadata creation cost/value continuum?

• Can we get more value by filling out a few more fields?


Current work: Poptonic

• A prototype consumer site for user-contributed celebrity gossip– Refining the EHN approach

• Key idea: user tagging mashed up with case frames– Reduce ambiguity by creating tags as role

fillers– Increase information content by creating rich

relationships between objects named by tags


Poptonic faceted navigation


Poptonic event entry


Modeling events in RDF

<Manifestation>

<Entity>1

<Entity>2

<Entity>n

<Event>

<Text>

skos:broaderInstantive

skos:subjectOf

<Role>2

<Role>3

<Role>1

<Role>1 <Role>2 <Role>3

jup:hasRole

jup:hasRole

jup:hasRole

skos:related

rdfs:subPropertyOf

Jup:Agent Jup:Instrument Jup:Object

rdfs:subPropertyOf rdfs:subPropertyOf rdfs:subPropertyOf


Example event

Wearing MISCHA BARTON JIMMY CHOO SHOES

2006-05-18T01:32:03-

07:00

MISCHA BARTON

JIMMY CHOO SHOES

Wearing

http://news.search.yahoo.com

/ search/news?...

skos:broaderInstantive

skos:subjectOf

jup:Wearer

jup:WornItem

jup:Wearer jup:WornItem

jup:hasRolejup:hasRole

skos:related

rdfs:subPropertyOf

jup:Agent jup:Object

rdfs:subPropertyOf

rdfs:subPropertyOf

http://news.search.yahoo.com/





Summary

• Faceted navigation depends on metadata

• Users are increasingly a source of rich, dynamic metadata

• User-generated metadata provides opportunities for new and compelling applications of faceted navigation

Siderean Software, Inc.390 North Sepulveda Blvd. Suite 2070El Segundo, CA 90245-4475 USA+1 310 647-4266http://www.siderean.com

ballen at siderean dot com

Siderean Software, Inc.390 North Sepulveda Blvd. Suite 2070El Segundo, CA 90245-4475 USA+1 310 647-4266http://www.siderean.com

ballen at siderean dot com

Faceted Navigation of User-Generated Metadata (Calit2 Rescue Seminar Series 2006)

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