Tools of the Trade

Thesaurus Management Tools Card Sorting XML

Thesaurus Management Tools

Thesaurus management has been a popular method of tagging information in the library sphere for a long time and has proven to be an effective means of helping to connect people with information. There has however been a change of practice in how thesaurus management is carried out which is arguably in part due to computers becoming cheaper and better equipped “to create and manipulate bibliographic data” (Schwartz, C, 2008).

However with the increasing popularity of full text indexing the usefulness of a thesaurus in an online environment at least needs to be reassessed. Aitchison, et al (2000 p. 5) stated that a thesaurus in information retrieval can still be used provided a need is identified with the “features modified and their mode of use changed”. Once it is established that a thesarus can enhance the information architecture of a website a thesaurus alone is not enough. There are many thesaurus management tools available which can help to enhance the user experience of searching through masses of information. One such tool is Skos. To read more about this system and what it can do click here.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a method of determining which information is most relevant amongst vast amounts of data which may need to be arranged within a website. The practice of card sorting gives insight into the ways in which the target audience of a website may think about the content presented to them and how they rate them in terms of importance.

Gerry McGovern gives a 13 step approach to the practice of card sorting which can be viewed here. Some of the points he makes are that a sample of 10 to 30 people should be used and that the sorting should be done relatively quickly to enable the most intuitive snapshot of what an arrangement of a website should be.

If the appropriate selection of people were chosen for the card sorting exercise it can be determined what sort of structure your website would be best suited to. This may be a hierarchical structure or chronological one or anyther depending on the content and results of the card sorting excercise.

Although it is possible to simply use physical cards to sort there are many card sorting tools out there which can help make the task and the data collected easy to understand and interpret. One such tool is Websort. You can have a look at Websort in more detail here and determine if it is worth the time to invest in it.

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Extensible Markup Language

Extensible mark up language (XML) is a method of applying custom tags to content on websites and other documents. They are flexible enough to be used in conjunction with other methods of coding such as HTML and can enhance a websites appearance by having information arranged categorically. It has value as an information architecture tool if used well as it creates a uniformed flow of data within a website.

The basic idea behind XML is to create a ‘parent’ custom tag and develop ‘sibling’ tags which hang off the parent tag. An example given on the W3C schools is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<note>

<heading>Reminder</heading>

<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>

</note>

The markings 'to', 'from', 'heading' and 'body' are custom tags which define what precedes them. This method of arranging information within a website creates uniformity which helps the sites visitor to become accustomed to a specific style present within a site.

To view details of XML software to help you build your site and manage your content you can do that here.

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