Finding the Right Recipe for Organizing Enterprise Metadata

8/6/2019 Finding the Right Recipe for Organizing Enterprise Metadata

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F i n d i n g t h e R i g h t R e c iO r g a n i z i n g E n e r p r i s eBy Daniela Barbosa

I t's no secret that theInternet is changing the waywe consume and digestinformation. Every day,

consumers who used to reach for

the Yellow Pages now reach forYahoo!, Google and hundreds ofother online resources. Informationseekers who once cracked openthose cherished encyclopedias in thelibrary now surf Wikipedia online.

For years, many enterpriseswatched this transformationfrom rhe sidelines, satisfied tocontinue adjusting the contentmanagement systems in whichthey had invested.

But the consumers at homeare also our employees at work.And when they arrive at theirdesks, they bring a new set ofexpectations that have beenshaped by their experiences withthe Internet, cell phones, email,mobile handheld computers andiPods. These and other innovationshave changed the way people consumeand interact with information.

Content and document manage-ment is not immune to this transfor-mation, Online sites such as Flickrand del.icio.us allow users to submittheir own m etadata, known as tags, toshape the architecture of their knowl-edge and how it's shared.

These practices known as social

tagging are too big and too valuableto the enterprise to be ignored. Asinformation professionals, we caneither be intimidated by our fears ofanarchy and information chaos, or wecan choose to apply these practices to

our advantage. In time - perhaps avery short time - we may not havemuch of a choice. Enterprise users will

demand flexible, easy-to-use taggingtools as part of their own pantry ofsupplies. The only remaining questionwill be whether or not we are pre-pared to serve it up.

Consider it an embarrassment ofriches: for the contemporary enter-prise, progress is not inhibited by alack of information, but by a lack ofeasy access to that information. Youknow the data you need is out there,but where? You believe there's anexpert in your organization who canhelp, but who? You suspect thatthere's a better way to share knowl-edge, but how?

For many years, enterprises haveresponded to the information glut by

creating taxonomies, structured hier-archies of metadata - or data aboutdata - that organize knowledge in a

f o rV I e t a d a t a

more orderly, more accessibmanner. These systems mbe used to classify docments, digital assets another content within any ty

of physical or conceptuentity - products, processknowledge fields, teams agroups, etc. - at any level granularity. In its simpledefinition, a taxonomy is tstandard vocabulary a copany uses to describe its buness. In practice, taxonomishould make informatieasier to find.

Folksonom ies to th e R escu

lagging, also known as socbookmarking, social indexor social classification, allusers to store, organisearch and manage contewith metadata they app

using freely chosen keyworThomas Vander Wai, the man wcoined the word folksonomies for tsocial approach to metadata, definit as "collaborative categorizatiusing simple tags."'

Tagging can facilitate collaboratamong specific teams and/or specprojects. As tags are shared, a feedbaloop is organically produced betwethe "taggers" and those consuming tags. In addition to the actual tag its

the act of tagging can provide informtion about the piece of content the has been applied to and about the uswbo have tagged it. On del.icio.us, example, users can see how many tima piece of content has been taggewhich may denote the relative imptance of that reference within the comunit>- - as well as who has tagged it {



sibly including notes on why it was tagged).

Some enterprise social bookmark-

ing applications have expertise locator

profile views that are dynamically gener-ated based on the information collected

from the users ' tags, helping the commu-

nity identify experts on various topics.

This kind of triangulated metadata fur-

ther enables knowledge identification

and sharing.

Tagging content can improve the

connections between content creators and

users, helping them do their jobs more

efficiently and intelligently.

While folksonomies can play a pow-

erful role within the enterprise, it would

be both premature and undesirable to

abandon traditional taxonomies altogether.

For one thing, many organizations have

already made significant investments in a

working taxonomy that has proven its

validity. More importantly, a professional

taxonomy offers an orderly structure into

which individual contributions can be

meaningfully placed. Further, the infor-

mation professionals themselves provide

necessary oversight and monitoring to

reduce the amount of redundant or

ambiguous tags that could create moreconfusion than clarity.

T h e H y b r id A p p r o a c h

Without a formal taxonomy, the enter-

prise risks losing control of vast volumes

of growing informat ion resources .

Without a folksonomy feature, the enter-

prise risks losing knowledge that might

remain unidentified within the corporate

taxonomy. Worse, it risks losing users

frustrated by a complex taxonomy that

resists their input and defies their own

vocabulary - creating, in essence, a dinnerparty at which no guests arrive.

Fortunately, the taxonomy versus

folksonomy issue is not an "either/or"

debate, but an opportunity for mutual

progress. By com bining the virtues of each

approach into a working hybrid model,

the enterprise can achieve its goal: a user-

friendly system that encourages collabora-

tion and makes information easier to find.

Many of the core benefits of a hybrid

model are germane to taxonom ies in gen-

eral: the integration of fragmented infor-mat ion, increased knowledge-worker

productivity, improved distribution of

information and more effective team and

cross-team collaboration.

Yet the incorporation of tagging

technology into the hybrid model yieldsnew benefits that cannot be realized - or

cannot be realized as efficiently - through

a corporate taxonomy. Although there

may be considerable overlap among the

following categories, it pays to consider

the advantages to three key constituents:

the enterprise itself, users/creators, and

taxonomists or information professionals.

B e n e f i t s t o t h e E n t e r p r i s e

Several direct enterprise benefits exist:

Greater scope and depth to informa-

tion capture. Social tagging helps the

enterprise capture documents , data,

reports and objects with a wider and

swifter net than hierarchical governance,

gathering content that would have been

lost or delayed had only the hierarchy been

applied. Tagging leverages the collective

power and knowledge of multiple eyes

reviewing a broader landscape of material.

Increased customer/market under-

standing. It's one thing to organize your

internal data, but incorporating relevant

outside information raises the challenge toano ther order of difficulty. In the past, indi-

vidual browser-based bookmarks were lost

to the broader community. In addition,

most users were discouraged by the diffi-

culty of cutting and pasting external docu-

ments into the organization's document

management system. Tagging, however,

makes it easy to bring outside information

in. According to a Forrester study of a pilot

tagging program, 83 percent of the tagged

content was external to the organization;

tagging rapidly incorporated relevant mate-

rial into the enterprise.-

Improved col laborat ion. Users can

easi ly create tags by product (e.g . ,

"Megatext2.0"), project (e.g . , "market

review") or even group identity (e.g.,

"Ry an's team") to identify information

relevant to sel f-defined groups and

encourage i t s rap id d i s seminat ion

among members .

Encourage transparency. Who found

a given item valuable and why? Tagging

tools supplement submissions with infor-

mation about the tag author and withopportunities for the submitter to add

explanatory commentary that establishes

him or her as part of the conversation.

Retain "lessons learned." Experienc

can be hard won, but losing valuable les

sons is a bitter pill indeed. Collaborativtagging preserves the collective wisdom o

team effort, ensuring that lessons ar

retained even as individual employee

change departm ents - or change em ployers

B e n e f it s t o C o n t e n t C r e a t o r s a n d U s e r s

The benefits to content creators include:

Faster and more effective sharing o

knowledge. Tagging turns ordinary data

collection and retrieval into an active con

versation among peers. The social contex

not only expands the pool of contributors

beyond the professional taxonomists, i

encourages a deeper engagement by facili

tating more connections among contribu

tors and across items of information.

Superior f indabi l i ty and refind

abi l i ty . Too many inquiries become

"Where's the beef?" chal lenges amids

a complex s t ew of in fo rmat ion

Informal tags apply the colloquial lan-

guage of actual user groups, increasing

the odds of ident ifying inform at ion

through terms familiar to the user.

Expertise discovery. Sometimes apersonal call is the quickest route to

insight - but who are you going to call?

Social tagging puts "faces" (in some

tools, quite literally - with photo grap hs)

to previously anonymous information

Users can follow tags as leads to potential

experts. They may also peruse the book-

mark or tag sets of individual contribu-

tors as a fresh entry point to previously

unexplored information.

Sat isfying expectat ions . Many

organizations turn a blind eye towardtechnology on the Internet, failing to rec-

ognize that today's consumers on the Web

are tomorrow's employees on their

intranets. The truth is, today's workers -

especially younger employees who have

been virtually nursed on cell phones,

iPods, instant messages and more - expect

speed, simplicity and control, and they

expect it now. If the enterprise fails to pro-

vide tools that fit their expectations, they

won't simply conform to standard prac-

tices - they'll ignore formal processes and

continue to use the tools that enable themto be successful, irrespective of potential

corporate impact. Better to incorporate



tools that bring these people in ratherthan impose complex content manage-ment structures that shut them out.

Once an enterprise has decided tomove forward with selected tools, it needsa plan for stimulating their use. Successfuladoptions apply the following elements:

1 . Enlightened self-interest. Whatenlightenment philosopher Adam

Smith said of free markets works forthe free exchange of information aswell: self-interest can work for thebenefit of the community. Any tag-ging tool must first serve the indi-vidual's need to organize material tohis or her advantage - or be/shewon't use it at all.

2 . Appropriate training. As we'velearned from early iterations of PCoperating systems, few things are trulyintuitive. Any investment in a folkson-omy/taxonomy tool should be com-

plemented with an investment inemployee training.

3 . Seed the system. Early adopters bringtwo important things to the table: aset of tags that prove useful to othersapproaching the system for the firsttime and a core of cheerleaders whocan be advocates for the system toother people within the enterprise.

M o d e ls a n d B e s t P r a c t ic e s f o r

S u c c e s s f u l H y h r i d T a x o n o m i e s

A great meal begins with a simple ques-tion: "What do I want to eat?" Similarly,the best way to approach a potentialhybrid taxonomy for your enterprise is tobegin with appetite: what do you want toget out of your folksonomy/taxonomymetadata initiative?

There is no one right way to incor-porate a folksonomy into your enter-prise. Instead, there are levels ofengagement ranging from free andloose social tagging with tittle supervi-sion to closely monitored tagging builtaround a tightly controlled core taxonomy.

By precisely ide ntifying yourgoals , you can more effectively deter-mine the balance between communityfreedom and centralized control that isright for your enterprise.

Today, the state of enterprise folk-sonomies is comparable to the state ofcorporate intranets a decade ago - a learn-as-you-go period of trial-and-error exper-imentation . The following is a sampling ofways enterprises can incorporate social

tagging tools into their taxonomies:< As a way of rapidly classifying content

by allowing the user community to ere-

B e s t P r a c t i c e : S e t G o a ls fo r Y o u r M o d e l

T h e f o l l o w i n g q u e s t i o n s c a n h e l p y o u s e t t h e o b j e c t i v e s y o u r

h y b r id m o d e l m u s t f u l f i l l .

Would you l ike to......add new navigational facets (such as tag clouds) to display? Tagging

tools instantly provide new ways to visualize metadata and, through

hyperlinks, to connect data, authors and users together....create communities? If your employees are engaged and eager to

use new tools, folksonomies can be a very effective way for them

to form teams, collaborate on projects and identify experts relevant

to their needs.

...classify a lot of content with minimal costs? By leveraging the col-

lective wisdom of the crowd, tagging tools can categorize content with-

out the time and expense of formal taxonomies. But, success depends

on consistent and active participation. And without active, centralized

oversight, there's the risk of high recall with low precision.

...improve search? Ultimately, that's the whole point - making content

findable. Folksonomies bring user language and interests to the mix,

but a hierarchical structure brings context that helps disambiguate

meanings, and consistent oversight can integrate user contributions

within the enterprise order.

...get users to interact more frequently with corporate tools, like portals?

Unfortunately, an enterprise tool isn't a "field of dreams" - building it

doesn't mean "they" will come. Encouraging real use is a matter of user-

friendly design, careful project rollout and sustained proselytizing.

...provide enterprise location tools? By incorporating data about the

contributors themselves, social tagging tools can help users identify

subject matter experts and colleagues who share common interests.

ate its own system of content reference -through tags - under casual oversight byenterprise information professionals.As a way of adding associative key-words to co ntrolled v ocabularies. Userscreens display terms from the enter-prise taxonomy, to which they maycontribute their own free-form tags ortags previously suggested by othercommunity members.As a way of attracting new terms vet-

ted by information professionals.Users can freely submit tags as theywish, but these are reviewed by smallgroups of moderators before theyenter the system. As fresh tags are sub-mitted, taxonomists can observe newconcepts and nomenclatures discussedwithin the enterprise and can becomebetter aware of emerging topics wonhadding to the corporate taxonomy.As a way of validating existing termswithin the enterprise taxonomy. Aworking folksonomy gives informa-tion professionals a means of measur-ing term popularity. If, for example.

the top five tagged terms are in taxonomy, the folksonomy has cfirmed the terms' relevance.

• As a mining tool to uncover new terand concepts important to the comunity. Digging throug h user tags asearch logs can provide additioinformation about the way people enterprise search tools.

There is no end to the possibilitiesa hybrid approach to enterprise tonomies and folksonomies. In fact, important conclusions are not the odrawn here, but the ones you reach acareful consideration of your enterpneeds and ambitions. O

1 . Thomas Vander Wai . "Folksonomy." h t

vanderwal.net/folksononi y. html.

2 . Leslie Owens. "Don't Throw Away That C^orp

Taxonomy Just Yet." Forrester Research, Int. Jan

3 0 , 2008.

Daniela Barbosa is business dfvelopmenl mana

for Sy nap tica, a Vocabulary and Metad

Managem ent Solution at Dow Jones. She may

reached at [email protected].

Finding the Right Recipe for Organizing Enterprise Metadata

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