Lecture 05: Searchability and Semantic Tagging

Question 1

What is information overload?

Answer 1

The difficult that people have when there is too much information for people to process and comprehend and as a result are unable to make a decision based on that information.

Question 2

What is information retrieval?

Answer 2

Information retrieval is the concept of collecting unstructured data in a range of formats from a large collection - in order to satisfy an information need. Metadata is used to aid in information retrieval in terms of retrieving information precisely and effectively.

Question 3

What is Metadata?

Answer 3

Metadata is data about data or information about information. In particular, structured information which focuses on:

1. Describing
2. Explaining
3. Locating
4. Making it easier to use, retrieve and manage an information resource

Question 4

What is a descriptive Metadata?

Answer 4

Descriptive Metadata is a form of Metadata which is used to facilitate searching for data objects using descriptors to qualify their content.

Question 5

What is a tag?

Answer 5

A tag is a form of Metadata which is to facilitate information searching and information management. It is used as a new entry point for data collections. The tag is often used in HTML which is machine parsable but does not display any content on the generated web page.

Question 6

What is tagging?

Answer 6

The process which focuses on the users choice of terminology to tag digital content.
Social tagging is a socio-technical context within tagging which focus on social computing and networks.
The process:
1. User chooses a tag that is meaningful to describe a resource
2. Usually a single world, but multiple tags (single words) is possible
3. Once the tag is assigned the tag(s) then act as index terms and they can either be public or private.

Question 7

What is a folksonomy?

Answer 7

A folksonomy is the resulting collective vocabulary from the process of tagging with a focus on knowledge organisation.

Question 8

Why do users decide to tag?

Answer 8

1. Future retrieval
2. Contribution and sharing
3. Attracting attention
4. Play and competition
5. Self-presentation
6. Opinion expression

Question 9

What are the seven functions of tags?

Answer 9

1. Identifying what or who a document is about?
2. Identifying what the document itself is
3. Identifying who owns the document
4. Refining documents or other tags
5. Identifying qualities or characteristics
6. Self-reference
7. Task organising

Question 10

What are the three tag categories?

Answer 10

1. Factual - refer to actual content of document
2. Personal - tags intended for creators own personal and practice use and can act as instructions
3. Subjective - judgements (cool or interesting)