Project Plan

INLS 520 (Organization of Information) Fall 2010

Wednesday (12:30pm – 3:00pm)
(office hours by appointment)

Instructor
Abe Crystal, Ph.D. ― 919.593.6129 ― abe@morebetterlabs.com

Project Overview
This project will challenge you to bring your understanding of “organization of information” to
bear on a real-life problem. As we cover different aspects of organization (such as the
specification of an information resource, representation, description, aboutness, arrangement,
etc.), you will apply those principles and skills to the creation of a small, but well-designed
organizational system.

Overall Keys to Success:

 Select an information space or collection that INTERESTS you and is in need of
organization
 Be creative, have fun
 Be willing to go beyond the class readings to find other resources to help you
 Collaborate with your fellow students through discussion and sharing of ideas or
resources
 Work on something that INTERESTS you (it bears repeating)
Project Schedule

Information system problem statement (Sep

8th)

Content sample (Sep 15th)

Facet analysis (Sep 29th)

Interface/Representation (Oct 13th)

Metadata specification (Nov 3rd)

Process (Dec 1st)

Final reflection (Dec 15th)

1. Information system problem statement
Submit by: September 8th (before class begins)
Purpose: Define the scope of your project.
Description: There are few boundaries to this initial phase of the project. Use your imagination
and have some fun. Please develop a scenario or story in which you have a collection of “items”
or “entities” that are in desperate need of organization so that they can be searched, accessed,
and used by some defined set of “users.” . Your items/entities may be documents, physical
objects, artifacts, multimedia files (audio, video, animation, etc.), Web pages, or any other
items that require some sort of organizational system.

Regardless of whether your items are digital or analog, your organizational system for them will
be digital (i.e., this is not just a physical organization or placement of items in containers, on
shelves, etc.).

Your scenario can be based on a real situation at work or home, or can be entirely fabricated –
just make it something INTERESTING to your team, because you will use the scenario and types
of items in the other parts of the project. The more detailed you can be about your scenario,
the easier the rest of the project will be.

Assumptions: A living system

 This collection will be actively used, searched, and accessed.
 This collection may grow in terms of number of items.
 Your organizational system may evolve over the course of its development.

Sample Scenarios:
Your collection should contain items that are rich in detail but not too complex. These are just a
few examples… be creative!

 A children’s museum acquires a collection of paper dolls

 Your CIO has asked you to make the company intranet more productive
 You are opening a specialty store online
 You are tracking crop circle events across the globe
 A university or research center is developing institutional repository of all the research
conducted by its faculty (e.g. http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/ or
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ )
 A medical researcher requires a patient information system
 A historical society acquires the drawings and plans of a famed local architect
 A computer support call center needs a centralized solutions database
 A group of multimedia artists want to easily find sound effects and music clips
  Your favorite collection (recipes, DVDs, MP3, action figures, tools, scholarly articles) is
out of control

Deliverable:
Please write a brief report introducing your information organization project. Write in the style
of a white paper or business report that describes your scenario and the challenges and
opportunities you see. Short paragraphs, bulleted lists, tables, and graphics are appropriate, but
do not assume that I know anything about your collection or its uses; you will need to provide
adequate background. The following sections and questions are provided to help spark your
thinking…

 Background – set the stage for your organizational problem – engage your readers, tell
us a story, make us care about the problem!

 The collection
o What is the nature of the collection as a whole? Where does this collection
reside? Is it a virtual/electronic collection of items or physical items?
o What needs to be organized? What is the “unit of analysis” – or the individual
item that needs to be described and accessed?
o Describe some of the typical items found in this collection. What characteristics
or attributes of these items would need to be accounted for in an organizational
system?
o Do items have relationships to each other? To people, places, things outside of
the collection?
o Is there a larger area of knowledge or domain of research/practice/interest that
your items fall into?

 The users (individuals and groups or types of users)

o Who needs to search for, access, and use the items in the system?
o Are there different types of users with different needs?
o Who will maintain the organizational system? How do their needs differ from
those of the general user?
o How would the collection be used?
o How would the organizational system be used?
o Does a user need to have a certain level or type of knowledge to use and
understand your organizational system (i.e., expert vs. novice user)

 The ideal system

o If you envision an “ideal” organizational system for your collection, what would it
look like? What are the characteristics of this ideal system?
 How could items be searched for, found, sorted?
 What needs to be tracked?
  How could the ideal organizational system enhance the experience of
accessing and using the collection?

 The challenges
o What challenges/obstacles/opportunities do you anticipate in organizing this
collection or designing an organizational system for it?
 Challenges related to the items themselves – describing them,
categorizing or arranging them?
 Challenges related to users/use of the collection or organizational system
 Challenges related to the design of the organizational system?
o Challenges related to your “living” system – new items coming in, lost or
borrowed items going out, new items with different characteristics that must be
accounted for in the system, keeping information up-to-date
o How do you plan to address challenges? What resources might be useful, given
your chosen scenario, type of items, type of users?

 Other concerns
o Are there any other concerns or issues that relate to your collection or
organizational system that you would like to address? These may be “open
questions” that you have, things that will need to be resolved later or
investigated further.
2. Content sample
Submit by: September 15th (before class begins)
Purpose: Investigate the types and characteristics of items in your collection.
Description: Before beginning to think about how to structure and organize your information
space, it’s helpful to get the lay of the land. Explore your collection in more depth, looking at a
wide variety of items. Make note of what you learn about the collection, the characteristics of
items, patterns and trends, etc.

Deliverable:
Prepare a list of examples of several different items (roughly 5 – 15; use your judgment as to
how many items you need to provide a good sense of the scope of the collection). Describe
each item and explain why you selected it as an example. Try to answer these questions for
each item:
 What characteristics or attributes of these items would need to be accounted for in an
organizational system?
 Do items have relationships to each other? To people, places, things outside of the
collection?

Then, reflect on what you learned from exploring the collection. How has your understanding
of the collection changed since you first started the project? What new challenges or
opportunities have emerged?
3. Facet analysis
Submit by: September 29th (before class begins)
Purpose: Begin to describe and organize your collection with faceted metadata.
Description: Develop facets that can be used to organize this content in a manner that supports
your users.

The faceted approach (Kwasnik, 1999):

1. Choose facets. Decide on the important criteria for describing and organizing
resources in your collection (for the purposes of searching, access, storage, sorting,
etc.). Be sure to link these criteria to users and usage scenarios.
a. Refer to the list of facets and attributes developed in class to brainstorm ideas
for your project, but you are by no means restricted to this list.
2. Develop facets. Each facet can be developed using its own logic and warrant and its
own classificatory structure. Examples:
a. Period facet could use a timeline
b. Materials facet could use a hierarchy;
c. Place facet could use a part/whole tree, etc.
3. Analyze entities using the facets. Choose items/entities from your content sample,
and analyze them using the facets you’ve identified.

Deliverable:
Present your proposed organization system by briefly describing:
 the classificatory scheme (logic and warrant)
 the organization structure of each facet.

Be sure to explain why each facet is useful for your users (could be either an internal user, like
an archivist, or an external user, like a customer) and usage scenarios.

Then, analyze each of the information items/entities you described in your content sample.

Provide a summary of the content sample and its associated facets. For example, suppose you
are organizing the contents of the SILS website. You might choose facets such as Task,
Audience, Topic, and Genre/Type to organize this collection. Then consider the “Research
Projects” page on the SILS Web site (http://sils.unc.edu/research/). The faceted metadata for
this page would then look something like this:
1) Task: Research Collaboration; Research Funding.
2) Audience : Researchers; Grantmakers; Prospective Students.
3) Topic: Research  Projects.
4) Genre/Type: Overview.
4. Interface/Representation
Submit by: October 13th (before class begins)
Purpose: Link the organization system to potential representations and user interfaces.
Description: It’s important to remember that the organization system will only be valuable once
people can use it to access the information in the collection. User interfaces (or
“representations,” more generally) are the link between items/entities and people.

Deliverable:
Sketch or mock up three different representations that people could could use to access your
collection, based on your faceted metadata. For example, consider interfaces such as…
 Standard search results with facets
 Integrated Faceted Breadcrumbs (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/faceted-
finding-with)
 Relation Browser
 FLAMENCO-style faceted browsing
 Related-items navigation on a web page
5. Metadata specification
Submit by: November 3rd (before class begins)
Purpose: Begin specifying the organization system so as to support system
design/implementation and interoperability.
Description: In this part of the project you will focus on “specification” in your system, meaning
the description of items/entities in your collection using structured metadata. You will select a
metadata (and encoding) schema and a content standard, and present evidence that supports
the appropriateness of these choices for your organizational system. Collaboration with other
project teams in the class as you investigate metadata schemas and standards is welcomed.

Step 1: Begin with your “unit of analysis.”

Step 2: Review your facet analysis. Your challenge is to define metadata that can specify all of
your facets and attributes.
Step 3: Investigate possible metadata schemas to find one that fits your information type/entity
the best. Do a thorough internet and database search on your schema, as well as on any
content/encoding standards used by communities that use the schema. Learn as much as you
can about the options for organizing your type of information and the metadata associated with
it. You can also create your own schema, or extend an existing schema, but be sure to explain
why you are doing so and what tradeoffs might be involved.
Step 4: Explain WHY (with supporting evidence such as case studies, academic analyses, reports
from practitioners, etc.) this is an appropriate standard/schema for your organizational
scenario, user/usage needs, etc. You may want to describe the success a particular
project/institution/business has had in implementing a particular schema.

Deliverable:
Your goal is to produce a report that will guide the catalogers (or information architects,
taxonomists, authors, subject matter experts, or other metadata creators…) who create
metadata for your collection. You are laying the groundwork for the crucial work of “Managing
Content.”

Please write a report in the style of a “best practices for metadata creation” report for your
institution. See www.bcr.org/dps/cdp/best/dublin-core-bp.pdf for an example of this type of
report. Of course you won’t have time to be as thorough as this professional report, which
probably took several months to prepare. But the key concepts are the same:
 Purpose and scope: Why are you defining metadata for this collection? What’s the
purpose?
 Element descriptions and examples: The CDP report does a great job here going into
detail on each element of the metadata schema, and providing clear examples.
o This is another good place to make use of your content sample—you can walk
through your content sample to create several examples for each metadata
element.
 o For each element, clearly specify whether you are using some kind of “control”
(e.g. authority file, controlled vocabulary, thesaurus). If control is needed for the
element, explain how it is defined and maintained. For example, if you are
specifying a thesaurus for an element, will you define and manage the thesaurus
internally within your institution, or will you use an externally-defined thesaurus
from another institution or consortium?

As before… Short paragraphs, bulleted lists, tables, and graphics are appropriate, but do not
assume that I know anything about your metadata schema/standard or its uses; you will need
to provide adequate background. You will need to cite relevant, outside sources (any citation
format is OK as long as it is consistently used). It is important that you make a logical argument
and present evidence that supports your choice of a metadata/encoding/content
standard/schema, given your project scenario.
6. Organization system process and implementation
Submit by: December 1st (before class begins)
Purpose: Investigate how you could bring your collection to life through metadata creation,
systems, and process.
Description: So far we have been engaged in the work for “Designing Structures” for our
collections. It’s also important to consider the “Managing Content” side of the model. Once
your metadata schema and terminology control are in place (the “structures”), how will your
institution use them to make your collection accessible (the “content”)?

Deliverable:
Please extend your existing report, which by now covers the project background, facet analysis,
interface possibilities, and metadata structures. Continue to write in the style of a white paper
or business report that describes your scenario and the challenges and opportunities you see.
Short paragraphs, bulleted lists, tables, and graphics are appropriate, but do not assume that I
know anything about your collection or its uses; you will need to provide adequate background.

Your goal is to explain how your institution will implement your brilliant metadata vision.

Please address the following issues and questions in your discussion:

 Who will create the metadata for your collection?
 What will the workflow look like?
 How will you ensure quality and consistency?
o Provide two sample records for items in your content sample to illustrate what
typical high-quality metadata records would look like.
 What systems or tools might be appropriate for your collection used to
o … create metadata?
o … manage content and metadata?
o … provide end-user access to the collection?
 Identify a rough timeline and cost for “managing your content” …
o … setting up the needed systems
o … cataloging the items in your collection
o … testing the implementation with users
o See http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/personnel/MidLevel09.pdf for
typical librarian salaries and http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/research/salary_survey.php for
typical information architecture salaries.
7. Final report
Submit by: December 15th
Purpose: Revise, polish, and create a portfolio piece.
Description: …

Deliverable:
…