Notes
Slide Show
Outline
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The Myth of Topic Maps:  What Works and What Doesn’t?
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Innovations in search?
  • How about, “Innovations in understanding?”
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Semantic Web?
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Price?
  • 1.98?
  • Price of what?
    • Newspaper?
    • Stadium seat?
    • Article?
  •   $,  , Ÿ, £?
  • Wholesale? Retail? Sale?
  • How?
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Meaning and retrieval start with a knowledge organization system (KOS)
  • Uncontrolled list
  • Name authority file
  • Synonym set/ring
  • Controlled vocabulary
  • Taxonomy
  • Thesaurus
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Meta Data
  • Data about data
  • Information about information
  • Natural
  • Added
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Data about ‘stuff’ - like what?
  • Author name
  • Date of creation
  • Language used in the creation
  • Title of the creation
  • Subject of the creation
  • Keywords...
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Narrowing the focus
  • Keywords (aka subject headings, index terms, identifiers, etc.) are one type of meta data.
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For example...
  • A bibliographic database record usually includes information such as author, title, language, date of creation, and subject area.
  • So does a traditional library card catalog
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But did you think about…
  • The legend on a street map?
  • The yellow pages in a telephone book?
  • The aisle signs in a supermarket?
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Meaning of meta data
  • Meta data is information that points to an answer or a solution
  • Meta data makes statements about an information resource or object
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Sidebar - meta data or metadata?
  • ‘Metadata’ is “a word coined by Jack E. Myers to represent current and future lines of products implementing the concepts of his MetaModel, and also to designate his company, The Metadata Company, that would develop and market those products.”
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Metadataä
  • A term not used prior to 1969
  • Used first in 1973
  • Registered U.S. Trademark (in 1986), owned by Jack Myers
  • Metadataä granted incontestable status in 1991
  • Designed to be a term with no particular meaning
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Meta Data
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Meta data as indexing language
  • List of words        Synonyms            Taxonomy             Thesaurus
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Taxonomy / thesaurus
  • Main Term (MT)
  • Top Term (TT)
  • Broader Terms (BT)
  • Narrower Terms (NT)
  • Related Terms (RT)
    • See also (SA)
  • Scope Note (SN)
  • History (H)
  • NonPreferred Term (NP)
    • Used for (UF), See (S)
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Taxonomy, Thesaurus, & Ontology
  • Taxonomies and thesauri are not ontologies
  • They are entities
  • Ontology – science of describing kinds of entities
    • “an explicit and formal specification of a conceptualization”
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Ontology
  • From philosophy – the science of describing
    • Kinds of entities in the world
    • How they are related
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OWL
  • Web Ontology Language
  • W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004
  • http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/Rec-owl-guide-20040210/
  • http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/Rec-owl-ref-20040210/
  • http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/Rec-webont-req-20040210/
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OWL
  • OWL output
    • Provides semantic meaning to these kinds of entities
    • Web resource
    • Accessible to automated processes
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OWL Ontology
  • May include
    • Classes
    • Properties
    • Instances
  • Capture semantics
  • Multiple, distributed, related ontology schema
  • Normative OWL exchange syntax        RDF/XML
    • Resource Description Framework/Extensible Markup Language
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Structure of
controlled vocabularies
  • List of words       Synonyms             Taxonomy              Thesaurus
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"<TermInfo"
  • <TermInfo>
  • <T>Agrotechnology</T>
  • <BT>Biotechnology</BT>
  • <NT>Animal management technologies</NT>
  • <NT>Controlled environment agriculture</NT>
  • <NT>Genetically modified crops</NT>
  • </TermInfo>      Source:  www.DataHarmony.com
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"<TermInfo"
  • <TermInfo>
  • <T>Agrotechnology</T>
  • <BT>Biotechnology</BT>
  • <NT>Animal management technologies</NT>
  • <NT>Controlled environment agriculture</NT>
  • <NT>Genetically modified crops</NT>
  • <RT>Agricultural science</RT>
  • <RT>Food technology</RT>
  • <UF>Plant engineering</UF>
  • <Scope></Scope>
  • <Editorial_Note></Editorial_Note>
  • <Facet></Facet>
  • <History></History>
  • </TermInfo>      Source:  www.DataHarmony.com
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"</PreferredTerm"
  • </PreferredTerm>
  • <PreferredTerm rdf:ID="T131">
  • <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">Agrotechnology</rdfs:label>
  • <BroaderTerm rdf:resource="#T603" newsindexer:alpha="Biotechnology"/>
  • <NarrowerTerm rdf:resource="#T252" newsindexer:alpha="Animal
  • management technologies"/>
  • <NarrowerTerm rdf:resource="#T1221" newsindexer:alpha="Controlled
  • environment agriculture"/>
  • <NarrowerTerm rdf:resource="#T2166" newsindexer:alpha="Genetically
  • modified crops"/>
  • <Related_Term rdf:resource="#T127" newsindexer:alpha="Agricultural
  • science"/>
  • <Related_Term rdf:resource="#T2020" newsindexer:alpha="Food technology"/>
  • <Non-Preferred_Term rdf:resource="#T3898" newsindexer:alpha="Plant
  • engineering"/>
  • </PreferredTerm>      Source:  www.DataHarmony.com
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Statements about what?
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Topic Maps
  • ISO standard - ISO 13250:2002
  • For merging back-of-the-book indexes
  • Collection of structured markup
  • Describing KOS
  • Associating KOS with information resources (objects)
  • Separation of KOS from objects
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Topic Maps
  • Three main concepts
    • Names of things
    • Occurrences of the named things
    • Associations between names
  • Three additional constructs
    • Identity
    • Facet
    • Scope
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Topic map
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Topic with occurrence
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Topics, associations, occurrences
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Problems with Semantic Web
  • Complexity
  • Lack of tools
  • Lack of skills
  • Limited resources
  • Gaming the system
  • The syllogism trap
  • KOS biases
  • Lack of agreement
  • Lack of interest
  • Good enough
  • Topic Maps vs. OWL
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Lack of agreement
  • “Symbionese Liberation Army credited with offing an SUV”
    • About - ‘revolutionaries’ or ‘freedom fighters’
    • About - ‘revolutions’ or ‘freedom movements’
  • “Symbionese Liberation Army accused of firebombing SUV”
    • About - ‘terrorists’ or ‘anarchists’
    • About - ‘terrorism’ or ‘anarchy’
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The syllogism trap
  • Humans are mortal
  • Greeks are human
  • Therefore, Greeks are mortal
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Topic Maps vs. OWL
  • TMCL
  • Topic maps
  • XTM, HyTM, LTM
  • ISO
  • OWL
  • RDF Schema
  • RDF
  • RDF/XML, N3
  • SOAP, WSDL
  • W3C
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Next best thing(s)
  • Full-text and applied indexing languages
  • Social book-marking
  • Make do
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Social book-marking
  • del.icio.us
  • www.citeulike.org
  • www.firststopwebsearch.com
  • www.flickr.com
  • www.furl.net
  • www.jeteye.com
  • www.zniff.com
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Full-text search and applied indexing languages
  • Full-text search engines - getting better
  • Thesauri applied using machine automated indexing - easier, faster, cheaper
  • Taxonomic navigation
    • Faceted navigation
    • Table of contents drilldown - taxonomy views
  • Query disambiguation
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Full-text search and applied indexing languages
  • Long history
  • Many richly developed thesauri with legs
  • Tools that work
  • Large body of professionals
  • Almost as rich
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Organizational objectives
  • ASIS&T  --  virtual library
    • Subject matter
  • ASRT  --  internal information control
    • Organization chart
  • Naval Postgrad  --  Homeland security degree
    • Curriculum outline
  • SLA  --  Web content
    • Public Web navigation
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SLA website and thesaurus
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SLA search
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Naval Postgraduate School’s Homeland Security Taxonomy
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Myth of topic maps
  • Not a myth
  • They do work
  • Limited adoption
  • Narrow, tightly defined niches
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Resources
  • www.accessinn.com
  • www.dataharmony.com
  • www.iso.org
  • www.ontopia.com
    • Lars Marius Garshol, “Metadata? Thesaurui? Taxonomies? Topic Maps!”
    • Steve Pepper, “The TAO of Topic Maps”
  • www.topicmaps.org
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Resources
  • Cory Doctorow, “Metacrap: Putting the Torch to Seven Straw-men of the Meta-utopia,” http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm
  • Russell Glass, “Is Anyone Going to Tag all of this Stuff?,” http://zoominfo.blogs.com/soughtafter/2005/03/semantic_web_is.html
  • Clay Shirky, “The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview,” www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_sllogism.html
  • Pete Norvig, “Semantic Web Ontologies: What Works and What Doesn’t,”
  • www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P7480_0_3_0_C