A Taxonomy for Metadata and Information Architecture

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A Taxonomy for Metadata and Information
Architecture

• A case study from the Dudley Knox Library at the
  Naval Postgraduate School
• Jim Ungar
• Web Services Librarian

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Agenda

• Taxonomy and Information Architecture defined
• Project description and objectives
• Taxonomy development process
• Transforming the taxonomy to an information
  architecture
• Usability Testing
• Taxonomy for search
• Challenges
• Next steps

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Taxonomy and Information Architecture defined

• Taxonomy
• Librarians
• Hierarchical term listing
• Used for
• Classification
• Metadata authority
• Term relationships

• Information Architecture
• End users
• Structure
• Navigation

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The Project

• Design and implement a dynamic, taxonomy based
  website for the Dudley Knox Library
• Designing an accurate taxonomy also will save
  time and energy in complying with Section 207 of
  the 2002 E-Government Act, which requires each
  agency to develop an overall taxonomy of its
  sites by the end of this year. Government
  Computer News 04/26/2004 Vol. 23 No. 9
• Examples
• Current resources by topic
• Forrester Research http//www.forrester.com/find
• Epicurious recipe browse http//www.epicurious.com
  /recipes/browse

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Objectives

• Improve findability and discovery
• Organize website content
• Provide keyword metadata for search
• Provide structure for site navigation
• Standardize nomenclature within the NPS context -
  pave the way for interoperability

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Project plan
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Building the taxonomy
Build taxonomy

• 4 librarians
• Thesaurus Master DataHarmony software
  http//www.dataharmony.com/index.html
• Term repository (our website partial NPS
  website)

Gather Resources
Define Facets
Collect Terms
Discuss with team
Vet with Librarians and management
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Building the taxonomy
Build taxonomy

• Topics
• Resource Types
• Audience
• Organizations
• Geography
• Services

Gather Resources
Define Facets
Collect Terms
Discuss with team
Vet with Librarians and management
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Building the taxonomy
Build taxonomy

• Iterative process collect, discuss, validate
• 100 total person hours over 4 months

Gather Resources
Define Facets
Collect Terms
Discuss with team
Vet with Librarians and management
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Applying the Taxonomy

• Exposing the taxonomy 3 ways each with different
  interfaces and interactions
• Information Architecture (end users browse)
• Search
• Administrative (web authoring, tagging content)

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Information Architecture
Design Information Architecture

• Taxonomy team mission accomplished
• Information architecture group formed
• Top-Down approach consistent with taxonomy
• Design a mock-up for each page type
• Reconcile labels for consistency

Gather Resources
Define Approach (top-down or bottom-up?)
Mock-ups
Reconcile website labels with taxonomy
Discuss with team
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Taxonomy terms vs. website labels
Categories that do not appear in the taxonomy are
probably hard to classify and deserve further
scrutiny
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Taxonomy terms vs. website labels
Resource type facet lends organization to the
labels
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In two steps
5 items
45 items
33 items
5 items
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New organization from facets
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Testing
Usability Testing

• Card sort and Web sort testing
• General testing with paper prototypes
• to compare our language with the end users
  mental model
• Validate single page architecture
• Task-based testing
• Discover user needs by testing the interaction
  within a larger context as the user executes
  tasks

Card Sort
Web Sort
General Testing
Task-based testing
More mockups
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Leveraging the taxonomy for search

• Content is tagged with keywords from the taxonomy
• The search engine does the rest
• Indexes content and metadata keywords
• Re-indexes results set and/or parses the taxonomy
  for related items
• Related items capability varies depending on the
  search engine

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Search results wire frame
Submarine
Search

• Search term
• Results for Submarine
• Submarine warfare in the pacific World War II
• descriptive text or summary descriptive text or
  summary descriptive text or summary
• descriptive text or summary descriptive text or
  summary descriptive text or summary
• Keywords Submarine, World War II, pacific,
  undersea warfare

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Challenges

• Improve findability for end users
• Interoperability with Section 207 of eGovernment
  Act
• Taxonomy updates and maintenance
• Providing a seamless and consistent way for
  librarians to tag content

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Next steps

• Build out information architecture
• More usability testing
• Integration with Content Management System

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Summary
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Questions?

• Contact
• Jim Ungar
• Web Services Librarian
• Dudley Knox Library
• Naval Postgraduate School
• jmungar_at_nps.edu

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(No Transcript)
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• 7 facets
• 100 terms

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Epicurious.com recipe taxonomy
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Faceted taxonomy
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Web based card sort