How Taxonomies Can Solve Complex Business Problems

by Ramona Aubry

Have you ever wondered what pain points a taxonomy can solve? In this session, we’re sharing our experience around the way in which taxonomies deliver value for organizations that struggle with content challenges. Join us to learn why taxonomies are unique in tackling the most advanced business problems when it comes to unstructured content.

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Data Discovery at Wiley

by Niké Brown

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How to Build a Knowledge Graph

by Paul Appleby

In this talk we cover the steps in the journey to creating a knowledge graph, from beginning to use taxonomies and ontologies through to finally delivering knowledge graphs at scale through APIs.

The best approach for many organisations is to deliver a knowledge graph incrementally to provide value as soon as possible. The learning curve can be steep and the skills are not always available. We look at how the latest tooling can help with this.

There is also the question of build versus buy (including open source) and we cover some of the pros and cons of both approaches.
The journey is not all about technology though so we also look at some of the points relating to users and patterns of working, collaboration and a few observations that we commonly see.

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Taxonomies for Confluence

by Eugene Morozov

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Why Graphs? The Limits of Hierarchical Thinking

by Bob Kasenchak

Why would a taxonomist interrogate the limitations of hierarchical thinking and information organization? Graphs offer more specific and flexible structures to model relationships between objects. This basic change of frame reflects more accurately the way humans understand information, provides flexible and extensible modelling options, and usurps existing (tree-based, or arboreal) power and information structures in favour of a decentralized, democratized information environment with no beginning and no end.

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The Evolution of UX Strategy

by Jaime Levy

Have you ever wondered aloud, what the hell is UX Strategy? Well Jaime Levy, the author of the O’Reilly Media best-selling book UX Strategy is coming with a long ranty answer. User experience (UX) strategy lies at the intersection of UX design and business strategy. This talk delves into the evolution of the term over the last 15 years and how it has taken on new meaning. Jaime will also provide a high-level overview of the product/UX strategy techniques that make up her methodology. Please come with good cheer and questions.

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Keywording Creative Content

by Clemency Wright

This presentation explores the key methodologies and strategies employed when Keywording creative content.

We’ll see how Keywording relates to content classification and content retrieval. We’ll look at illustrated examples and learn about real-life case studies, and how organisation employ creative Keywording practices.

There is a focus on conceptual Keywording and the impact this has for today’s brands and visual communications.

This presentation introduces the practical skills required to harness conceptual keywords, optimise access to assets, and target more users with relevant content.

The key principles of Relevance, Accuracy and Consistency will be discussed alongside visual examples, to achieve the key learning outcomes.

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Basic Steps in Creation of Structured Vocabulary

by Leonard Will

When creating a structured vocabulary, in addition to the technical and intellectual considerations about defining concepts and their relationships, there are management aspects that have to be resolved. Why do you think that a structured vocabulary is needed? What resources will it give access to? Who will use it, at the input and output stages? What kind of structure will be appropriate? What software will it use? Who will maintain it? These matters are dealt with in clause 13 of the international standard ISO 25964-1:2011, which this talk will summarise to encourage participants to answer these questions for themselves.

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E-commerce Search is Broken - How to Fix it With Open Source Software

by Charlie Hull

The simple truth is that if you can't find it, you won't buy it - but in that case why do so many e-commerce websites fail at the basics of search, with irrelevant or even zero results for the simplest of queries? Charlie will show examples of search failures and introduce Chorus, an open source reference implementation for powerful and relevant search that can be swiftly tuned to fix common e-commerce search issues.

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by David Haynes

David Haynes will talk about ways in which metadata’s role in the digital economy is changing. In his book "Metadata for information management and Retrieval" he talks about the six purposes of metadata. Some areas such as information retrieval are due a re-think and other areas such as information governance are becoming more critical.

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by Mohammed Sadat Abdulai, Georgina Burnett, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

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Tuesday, 19 October 2021

Coping with Complexity: Building a Knowledge Graph for UK Parliament

by Anya Somerville and Michael Smethurst

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Tuesday, 14 September 2021

Copyright in a Knowledge Organization Workplace

by Stephen Garfield

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Tuesday, 06 July 2021

On the Pre-history of Information Technology

by Stephen Robertson

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by Chris Newell.

Many archives and content production systems suffer from a lack of comprehensive content metadata. This presentation describes work to overcome this using automated text tagging and classification tools which can be applied to text documents, video subtitles or speech-to-text transcripts.

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ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 3: VocBench Vocabulary Versioning and Data Catalogue

by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

In this last interactive workshop in the VocBench series, we'll talk about managing versions of your vocabulary. We'll provide an instance for all participants to get the first-hand experience - you'll be able to use a preloaded vocabulary to play along or bring your own.

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MS Teams – The Case for Information Architecture and Governance

Presentation by Metataxis.

This presentation seeks to address the issues and challenges organisations and information managers are facing with the introduction of MS teams, providing practical advice on how to address them, focusing on the developing a robust information architecture and governance .

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ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 2: VocBench Data Import with Sheet2RDF

by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

In this second interactive workshop, we'll talk about importing existing vocabularies into VocBench. We'll use both standard format and Sheet2RDF feature. You'll be able to play along using the provided data. If you manage your vocabulary in a spreadsheet, you can bring it along, and we'll see what we can do!

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by Paul Rissen

Drawing upon the work of screenwriting experts, critics and academics, as well as seven years of experience with narrative online, this talk will demystify the process of crafting a narrative, showing how information architecture and structured thinking can help us make sense of the stories we tell ourselves every day.

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ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 1: Introducing VocBench

by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov

"Introducing VocBench" is the first workshops in which speakers will present VocBench and explain the basics. A VocBench instance will be created to provide participants with a first-hand experience. Participants will be able to use preloaded vocabulary or bring their own. An open Q&A session is arranged to give participants an opportunity to ask questions and share their experience with VocBench.

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Going Virtual with Taxonomy Boot Camp London

by Helen Lippell and Kat Allen from Taxonomy Boot Camp London

This was a very different talk from what might have been if we'd been asked in 2019. The call for papers for TBCL 2020 was sent out early last year, just as worrying news about the novel coronavirus were emerging.

Boot Camp has been running since 2016 (and its US sister event for over a decade). The last year has been unlike any other. We explained how we have adapted to changing circumstances to create an online version of our friendly and intensive conference.

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Tuesday, 16 February 2021

Searching Fast and Slow: Exploring Alternative Approaches to Search for Knowledge Workers

In this Meetup, Dr Tony Russell-Rose considers knowledge workers such as information professionals, legal researchers and librarians and their requirements to create and execute search strategies that are comprehensive, transparent, and reproducible.

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Tuesday, 19  January 2021

Email and MS Teams From an Information Architecture Perspective

In this Meetup, James Lappin  has explored what strategies towards email will best enable information professionals to make a positive contribution to how messages are managed, protected and exploited as a knowledge resource. 

 James Lappin has spent over twenty years working in the field of archives and records management.  He has provided consultancy advice for UK Parliament as well as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power. James is currently working for the European Institutions. He is also carrying out a doctoral research project into archival policy towards email in conjunction with Loughborough University and the National Archives. James is the author of the Thinking Records blog and presenter of the IRMS podcast series.

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Interactive Workshop VocBench: Getting Started, Installation Step 1

VocBench is a web-based open source application to build knowledge organisation systems using SKOS, but it needs a bit of work get it running. In this interactive workshop, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov will walk through prerequisites and the local set up of VocBench step-by-step, and develop a simple taxonomy using Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS). A Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) provides a standard way to represent knowledge organisation systems such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies within the framework of the Semantic Web.

Tuesday, 17 November 2020

Myths and Half Truths About Semantic Data Modelling

In this talk, Panos Alexopoulos, Head of Ontology at Textkernel,  described certain myths and half-truths that are found in the semantic modelling world and discussed what typically happens in reality.

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