Category: Taxonomy And Metadata

In this article, Sarah Saunders of Electric Lane discusses the need for Controlled Vocabularies in addition to text search systems that rely solely on user keywords:

“The problem anyone keyboarding images faces is this. Language is a wonderful, expressive tool for communication, there are many ways to say the …

An article by Jim Kidwell on the Extensis blog discusses five tips for setting up an organised folder structure for those DAMs that use this metaphor:

1. Understand the consequences of spaces and underscores at the beginning of folder names.
2. Use folders as a way of applying keyword.
3. Avoid ambiguous and

The UK’s Press Association (PA) last week illustrated the dangers of using inadequately catalogued stock photography.  The Cambridge News covered a story about “Train Rage” which had been provided by the PA.  They had inadvertently chosen an image of the train tracks that lead up to the gates of Auschwitz …

Another example of social media websites taking a blasé attitude to embedded metadata is Facebook’s new photo sharing platform.  As reported on the Photometadata blog:

“In addition, while the images that can be viewed online are now up to 720 pixels on the long dimension, they are still …

Seth Maislin writing on the Earley Associates blog discusses the role of indexing (for books and publications) and how a ‘Cloud’ based approach where end users contribute to produce the index may provide a method for publishers to continue to index titles. He also considers how manual indexing is disappearing …

Lesley Mackenzie-Robb, writing on vantaggio-learn.com compares free text searching and controlled vocabularies.

She makes the point that while Controlled Vocabularies should theoretically provide an enhanced search experience because they offer the user a more focussed and subject oriented range of options to narrow searches, there is subjectivity involved in …

Matt Brandon, writing on The Digital Trekker blog describes how keywording (adding tags, descriptions and other metadata to assets) is a mundane but essential task – especially for photographers who need to sell images:

“For some of you, this is not very important, all you need to do is …

Barry Smith, from Buffalo University has produced this free course: “Introduction to Ontology: From Aristotle to the Universal Core“.  The course is aimed at those with an information science or philosophy background and covers a number of topics:

• Ontology as a Branch of Philosophy
• Ontology and Logic
• The

In this article, Mike Bergman discusses how linked metadata can hinder the ultimate goal of metadata management – namely meaningful, interoperable information – if it is made an objective in itself.

“Linked data is a good thing, but not an ultimate thing. By making linked data an objective in itself …

Metadata vocabularies are becoming increasingly complex, granular and multi-faceted – nowhere more so than preservation and heritage oriented archives which typically catalogue a much greater amount of information about assets and artefacts than business oriented DAMs.  While extending the depth of cataloguing data helps to provide an enhanced range of …

The Taxonomy Blog has recently published an article: “Skills Of A Classy Taxonomist” which discusses the role classification analysis has in developing a taxonomy.  The authors compare this to writing a specification and describe three key benefits of this approach:

• Clarify specific terms by situation or functions
• Ease

In this article on the answermaven.com blog, Constance Ard considers the consequences of “The Information Gap” – a conceptual term used to refer to the difference between information creation and use:

“Taxonomies are just one component of good content management.  And content management is only a single component …