JISC

Enhanced Tagging for Discovery, a Semantic Interoperability Demonstrator, will investigate the combination and comparison of controlled and folksonomy approaches to semantic interoperability supporting resource discovery in repositories and digital collections. This project will demonstrate and evaluate the combination of both approaches in the context of repositories and digital collections, attempting to get the best of both worlds.

The project will investigate deploying demonstrators with two communities of use: at Intute, focusing mainly on tagging by readers (postgraduate users annotating resources with tags); and at CCLRC, focusing mainly on tagging by authors (when they deposit in the repository).

The project will evaluate the results by a range of quantitative and qualitative measures. It will evaluate scenarios for indexing and search. It will make recommendations with reference to resource discovery in digital repository networks

Overview

The aim of the project is "to build a demonstrator to test the combination and comparison of controlled and folksonomy approaches to semantic interoperability."  We wish to explore how to optimise social tagging systems for discovery and how to combine them in different ways with more controlled knowledge organisation and retrieval systems.

We aim to investigate whether vocabulary control and the use of an established KOS can assist in moving free social tagging beyond personal bookmarking to aid resource discovery in context of the JISC Information Environment and eFramework. The project will demonstrate use of tagging in different environments and will provide an interface that enables use of a traditional classification scheme to enhance free form tags. The project will consider issues, such as whether prompting with controlled terminology is beneficial.

Aims and objectives

• To build a demonstrator to test the combination and comparison of controlled and folksonomy approaches to semantic interoperability
• To investigate whether vocabulary control and the use of an established KOS can assist in moving free social tagging beyond personal bookmarking to aid resource discovery in context of the JISC Information Environment and eFramework.

The project will:

• Demonstrate use of tagging in different environments (within Intute and CCLRC)
• Provide an interface that enables use of a traditional classification scheme to enhance free form tags.
• Consider issues, such as whether prompting with controlled terminology is beneficial.

Project methodology

The project will investigate deploying demonstrators with two communities of use: at Intute, focusing mainly on tagging by readers (postgraduate users annotating resources with tags); and at CCLRC, focusing mainly on tagging by authors (when they deposit in the repository).

The results of the use of the demonstrators will then be evaluated by a range of quantitative and qualitative measures. It will evaluate scenarios for indexing and search. It will make recommendations with reference to resource discovery in digital repository networks.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

It is envisaged that the work will benefit development of the Information Environment and the Intute Repository Search Service. The project will input service descriptions to the e-Framework. Outcomes from the project will also inform advice given by the Repositories Support Project.

Lead Institution

• UKOLN at the University of Bath 

Project partners

• University of Glamorgan
• Intute (MIMAS at The University of Manchester)
• CCLRC

Non-funded supporting partners

• OCLC Office of Research, USA