[Sigia-l] Faceted approach applied to content

[kkotwica at cxo.com]

Hi all,

A little background:

I have convinced my company to go to a faceted like tagging system for a new
system being built. I've created a facets and values document that will be used
to tag/describe all of our products and customers (database and apps back-end
still being built but soon will be in testing phase). Our products are not
retail items like TVs or wine, but content driven like articles, white papers,
survey results, and events. This system also needs to describe our customers,
including readers, event attendees, sponsors, vendors, and discussion thread
members.

I have used hierarchical taxonomies in the past and the parent-child
relationships always makes it hard to update/change the system. I believe the
flat, flexible and multiplicative aspects of a faceted approach is the way to
go.

I have read what I can about faceted classification online, including summaries
of Ranganathan's theory (have not read the original). One of the tenets as I
understand it is facets must be mutually exclusive (unique qualities) from each
other. That makes sense to me.

The question:

Do the values of a facet need to be mutually exclusive?  Because I'm working
with content and concepts, more complex ("fuzzy") than a bottle of wine, I will
allow an internal tagger to select multiple values from a facet to describe an
entity. I'm not sure if that, classically, is considered a no-no.   I don't
think it's a problem but want to get your feedback.

Kathleen Kotwica
Director of Online Research
CXO Media Inc.
kkotwica at cxo.com
http://www.cxo.com