[Sigia-l] Metadata::Information type

[Ginny Risk]

Jason,

I find working with information types can be one of the best ways to
show relevance for specific user needs.  This would not have to be an
individual "best bets" approach.

Caveats:
Provenance does not (necessarily) equal information type.
File format does not equal information type. (You know this, but IT
folks need to be told.)
Labels for types must be clear and distinct.

Suggestion:
Look at search results for information types.  Look for patterns and
characteristics that distinguish types.  There may be a way to specify
these using business rules, additional search terms, or existing
metadata.

Perhaps you could pull out Laws and Regulations, Case Law, and some
scholarly journals by publication titles.  This might more sense than
News Articles versus Journal Articles.

-- Ginny

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] 
> On Behalf Of Jason Burton
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 3:22 PM
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Metadata::Information type
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> This is my first post, so apologies if its not in keeping 
> with the list (to get my excuses in early - I did check the 
> archive before posting).
> 
> I'm currently working on a site: c. 2,500 plus pages, access 
> to a database of offline library material, database of 
> archived magazine articles among other things.
> 
> We know that people are frustrated with the search facility 
> and suspect that part of the problem is that certain types of 
> information - that are relevant to some users, but not all - 
> are swamping the relevant results.
> 
> A couple of scenarios to illustrate my point:
> 
> User 1 is a researcher looking for material on affirmative 
> action in the workplace - to write an article about its 
> impact on company performance for a thesis. She searches on 
> 'affirmative action' and gets back some articles from a 
> magazine archive and some references to journal articles in 
> the library. She goes away happy having gathered some 
> substantial material for her thesis.
> 
> User 2 is working under pressure in a small company and her 
> boss asks her to find out what is the minimum the company can 
> get away with in terms of an affirmative action policy. She 
> performs the same search as User 1 and gets the same results 
> back. However, User 2 is less than satisfied - she wanted 
> practical help, not a bunch of old articles and long-winded 
> academic stuff. As it happens there was some practical 
> information on the site, but it was swamped out by large 
> numbers of journal article abstracts and archived magazine 
> articles, so she didn't find it.
> 
> Our proposed solution (I'm afraid ignoring the needs of one 
> of the users is not an option) is to add a metadata element 
> to all content describing its type (e.g. News Article, 
> Journal Article, How-to-guide). Some of you may equate this 
> to the Dublin Core element: Type.
> 
> Then we plan to group search results in a simmilar way to 
> Nielsen's Use It site 
> http://useit.mondosearch.com/cgi-bin/MsmFind.exe?QUERY=heurist
ics.