Controlled Vocabulary

 

Links to other Sites (categorized by topic)

Articles on Controlled Vocabularies, and Classification Systems
Looking for Metadata in All the Wrong Places: Why a controlled vocabulary or thesaurus is in your future.
Cuisinarts, E-Commerce, and ... Controlled Vocabularies, from Dr. Dobbs Journal
•Christine Wodtke explains about "Using controlled vocabularies to improve findability" in this tutorial on Digital Web magazine.
•A list of the terms used to categorize most of the records in the Creativity Based Information Resources Database at Buffalo State College, including a PDF you can download.
•An overview of the Library of Congress Subject Headings from Buffalo State.
•A two level hierarchy (9 top level subject areas) used for research by subject matter at Kansas University.
•Prof. Tim Craven's (University of Western Ontario) online module to teach you the basics of constructing an information retrieval thesaurus.
Guidance on building and using a Thesaurus from Queensland University of Technology.
•Lists of links to other Thesauri and Controlled Vocabularies from Queensland University of Technology.
•The Gateway to Educational Materials, and their Controlled Vocabularies used for education.
•A PDF with a discussion of Free Text vs. Controlled Vocabulary systems from Lebanon Valley College. And another from Washington State University.
ASPP, American Society of Picture Professionals has some resources for those devising a method to file and retrieve images.
•The CENDI presentation archive has a number of media files (Powerpoint and PDF's) regarding the use of controlled vocabularies and the internet. CENDI is is an interagency working group of senior Scientific and Technical Information Managers from nine U.S. Federal Agencies. There is also a page regarding Taxonomies, Terminologies, and controlled vocabularies including their CENDI Science Terminology Locator.
"All About Facets and Controlled Vocabularies" is an introduction to a series of four articles by Karl Fast, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel on the Boxes and Arrows website.
"What is a Controlled Vocabulary" in another article by Fast, Leise and Steckel, which discusses the concept of what a Controlled Vocabulary is, and how it is used.
"Creating a Controlled Vocabulary" is another article by by Leise, Fast and Steckel that describes a process for building your own controlled vocabulary (CV). Rather than the "what, this article focuses on the “how”including a process for creating any kind of controlled vocabulary and introduces the concept of facets.
•The blog entry "Build Digital Asset Catalogues That Reflect The Needs Of Your Business" touches on a number of issues that emerge when employees are asked to take on the management of a controlled vocabulary and the application of keywords, in addition to their regular duties.
• The article titled "Designing a Controlled Vocabulary for use with Digital Asset Libraries" gives an overview of the topic, touching on structure and depth of controlled vocabularies.
•Barbara H. Kwasnik, discusses "The Role of Classification in Knowledge Representation and Discovery" in this journal article.
• Michael Buckland, from the University of California makes a case for "Vocabulary As A Central Concept In Library And Information Science."

Keywording
•Real world examples of key wording in action, shows a wide variety of associated pictures with key words.
•This basic key word document from the Picture Agency Council of America (PACA) covers a lot of information in two pages, but is unfortunately no longer available.
"Tagging and Why It Matters" an essay from David Weinberger, author of "Everything is Miscellaneous" discusses how tagging empowers readers and has social and business benefits.
The Mechanics of Keywording, (PDF) as related by Janet Dunham & Bob Smith at a North American Nature Photography Association breakout session in 2009.
•See and hear Karsten Risseeuw's screencast of a presentation on "Multilingual Contextual Keywording" where he describes an approach they have used in the development of their KIM keywording solution.
"Can the Inmates Help Run the Asylum?" looks at user-generated tagging within the context of a research library.
Sarah Saunders of Electric Lane writes about effective keywording in the Word Up... article in the British Journal of Photography.

Metadata
•Controlled vocabulary considered as Metadata for subject searching, .
•Learn about the concept of "Crosswalks" in Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information from the Getty Museum website.
•Organizing Information: Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies, from UC Berkley.
•A Metadata Glossary - Victor Lombardi explains the differences between taxomonies, ontologies and controlled vocabularies.
•Woody Pidcock gives his explantion about the differences between, "a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model."
•Debbie Campbell explains how the Dublin Core Metadata and the Australian MetaWeb Project are involved to make metadata work on the web.
•Jim Goldstein interviews David Riecks by for his Exif and Beyond podcast series regarding PhotoMetadata.org, Controlled Vocabulary, and the GetMetaSmart tour.

Thesauri
How do you build a thesaurus? from Dr. Dobbs Journal
•Online Dictionaries, Glossaries and Encyclopedias - 101
•An article discussing Criteria for Evaluating Thesaurus Software by Jochen Ganzmann, including a checklist.

General
•An article on Keyword Theory by James Cook discusses the pros and cons of open vs controlled vocabulary.
•A word stemming generator developed at DePaul might be used to think of word origins you may have not considered.
•The Digital Libraries Initiative's D-Lib magazine is available online.
"Keeping Found Things Found" explores another means for Personal Information Management.
•The "Stuff I've Seen" (SIS) program attempts to answer the riddle: The more data you have, the more you know...The more you know, the more you forget...The more you forget, the less you know....So why have data?

Media Asset Management
"Direct Annotation: A Drag-and-Drop Strategy for Labeling Photos" links to a Word document by Ben Shneiderman, Hyunmo Kang.
•The University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Laboratory has developed a prototype application called PhotoFinder as part of its research effort on Personal Photo Libraries. Read about "Web-siteStarter: Exporting photo library to the web" in this Word document.
When Image Is Everything: Finding and Using Graphics from the Web by Nicolas G. Tomaiuolo. Want to know where to go for images, how to find and download them, and the copyright issues involved? Then focus in on this descriptive article and you'll get the picture!

Businesses and Organizations involved in Metadata and Taxonomy creation and Maintenance

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is the group that is engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. While the name might imply that the group is in Ireland, it actually refers to Dublin, Ohio, the location of the first meeting of the Library and Information Science professionals that devised the "core" set of metadata for cataloging content on the internet.
Taxonomystrategies is an information management consultancy that specializes in applying taxonomies, metadata, automatic classification, and other information retrieval technologies to the needs of business.
Pound Hill Software has done some especially interesting work with the XMP metadata framework for the publishing industry.
CIP4 is international, world wide operating standards body located in Switzerland working to encourage computer based integration of all processes that have to be considered in the graphic arts industry, in particular the specification of standards, such as the Job Definition Format (JDF).
•The Resource Description Framwork (RDF) is a project of the WC3, the standards body that brought you HTML and the internet (after a fashion).
Webchoir is a full-featured, integrated vocabulary control system with solutions for: information producers, indexers, and seekers.
SchemaLogic provides commercial solutions to simplify data integration and information retrieval through the use of collaboratively shared schema.
•The PLUS Coalition has built a glossary and usage matrix controlled vocabulary to be used in the licensing of photographic images.
•The Faceted Classification forum discusses the creation and implementation of an alternative to controlled vocabularies named, obviously enough, "Faceted Classification."
•The eXchangeable Faceted Metadata Language provides the XFML format for all to use in representing glossary/thesauri structures. The XFML 1.0 spec can be downloaded from a page on this site..

Software for Creating and Maintaining Thesauri

•The Queensland University of Technology maintains a list of Thesaurus and Ontology Management Software that may be of use.
Term Tree Thesaurus Software is from Australia and has a Windows only application that can be used to create and manage subject (ISO 2788) or records management scheme (AS4390 - ISO 15489) thesauri, synonym rings, controlled vocabularies or taxonomies.
•The Willpower Information website has a whole section on Software for Building and Editing Thesauri.

Blogs and Podcasts

•The SAA Metadata Manifesto Blog provides updates and notices about best practices in the use of image metadata.
•The Photo Metadata Blog is updated periodicaly with news items referring to metadata issues.
That DAM show is a weekly the media industry's first and only podcast devoted to content and digital asset management.
•The Exif and Beyond podcast covers a wide variety of topics centered on digital photography and image management.
•Henrik de Gyor shares what he has learned as a Digital Asset Manager for an educational organization in his Another DAM Blog -- such as dealing with collections, metadata management, permissions and training for all users throughout an enterprise.
•Philip Spiegel covers topics regarding Digital Asset Management, Media Asset Management, Metadata, and Archive Operations in his DAM ideas blog.
•The Cataloging Futures blog is a stated "Work" in Progress regarding the future of cataloging and metadata in libraries.

 

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