[Sigia-l] Sanity Check, part 2: citations of "user centered metadata"

[Peter Merholz]

> For our purposes, we just want to have our development of
> metadata resources and services follow a user-centered
> approach. But having not found any literature which
> specifically mentions this concept, I'm wondering this
> a term that anybody else uses? And in what context?

I've never heard that specific term. I think UNR has made it up.

But, it got me thinking.

You might want to explore the publications associated with Flamenco, a 
faceted metadata project coming out of SIMS at UC Berkeley:
http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/publications.html

The research was very user-centered... usability studies and interviews 
galore, trying to understand how to present faceted metadata in a way 
that would be meaningful and useful to its users.

And, of course, there's always card-sorting as a way to get at it.

Katherine Bertolucci <URL: 
http://www.isisinform.com/kathern_site_ii_001.htm > gave a talk at the 
IA Summit that is kinda related. She described her metadata/taxonomy 
development process, which very makes takes into account the people who 
will be using the metadata. From her essay on her approach:
"The art of taxonomy is in discovering the client’s individual methods 
of interacting with information and combining this with the material’s 
unique characteristics." <URL: 
http://www.isisinform.com/kathern_site_ii_006.htm>

It's interesting that "client" can be considered Katherine's "user", 
because these are the poor schmucks who will have to be doing the 
tagging. I thought it was interesting to remember that for many, if not 
most of us, who develop metadata, we have to keep in mind these two 
user types, and not necessarily favor one over the other.

--peter, who will be disappointed if this list once again devolves into 
the cesspool of pettiness that it had been not long before the summit.