Author Archives for Fran

Building, visualising and deploying taxonomies and ontologies; the reality – Content Intelligence Forum event

June 6, 2012 8:53 am Published by Leave your thoughts

I have been trying to get to the Content Intelligence Forum meetups for some time as they always seem to offer excellent speakers on key topics that don’t tend to get the attention they deserve, so I was delighted to be able to attend Stephen D’Arcy’s talk a little while ago on taxonomies and ontologies. Stephen has many years of experience designing semantic information systems for large organisations, ranging from health care providers, to banks, to media companies. His career illustrates the transferability and wide demand for information skills. His 8-point checklist for a taxonomy project was extremely helpful –... Read more »


Google goes semantic

May 20, 2012 12:24 pm Published by Leave your thoughts

A happy week for ontologists, taxonomists, and other knowledge organisers as Google reveals its knowledge graph. Patrick Lambe sums it up wonderfully: Google Finally Comes Out of the Closet on Taxonomies. Here’s a great post by Seth Earley: Google Knowledge Graph and Taxonomy – It’s in There.


I friend dead people – Are social media mature enough to cope with bereavement?

May 13, 2012 12:37 pm Published by 3 Comments

This is a very personal post about topics in which I am not an expert, so I welcome comments and suggestions. When “like” and “lol” don’t help In February, a young man I had never met died in sad circumstances. He was a friend of a friend and I was supposed to meet him on the day he died. Completely coincidentally, within a fortnight I myself lost a dear friend, someone I had known for over 20 years. The closeness in timing has thrown out sharp contrasts in the way that these deaths have reverberated around my social media worlds... Read more »


Change, technology, understanding, and the information professions

April 2, 2012 4:31 pm Published by Leave your thoughts

Not being a morning person, I was unsure whether a networking breakfast would suit me, but the recruitment agent Sue Hill’s event offered good food and interesting conversation, so I thought I would give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed – the food was excellent and the big round tables promoted lively group discussion. We were a mix of information professionals from public and private sector, at different stages of our careers, but three key themes prompted the most debate. Change management Managing technology change and bridging the cultural and political divisions within organisations in order to bring about change... Read more »


Isn’t search the same as browse?

March 11, 2012 4:03 pm Published by Leave your thoughts

I nearly wept when one of our young rising IT stars queried in a meeting why we had separated “search” and “browse” as headings for our discusssions on archive navigation functionality. So, to spare me further tears here are some distinctions and similarities. There won’t be anything new for information professionals, but I hope it will be useful if any of your colleagues in IT need a little help. I am sure this is far from comprehensive, so please leave additions and comments! Differences between search and browse Search is making a beeline to a known target, browse is wandering... Read more »


Data: The New Black Gold?

February 12, 2012 11:11 am Published by Leave your thoughts

Last week I attended a seminar organised by The British Screen Advisory Council and Intellect, the technology trade association, and hosted by the law firm SNR Denton. The panellists included Derek Wyatt, internet visionary and former politician, Dr Rob Reid, Science Policy Adviser, Which?, Nick Graham, of SNR Denton, Steve Taylor, creative mentor, Donna Whitehead, Government Affairs Manager, Microsoft, Theo Bertram, UK Policy Manager, Google, David Boyle, Head of Insight, Zeebox, and Louisa Wong, Aegis Media. Data as oil The event was chaired by Adam Singer, BSAC chairman, who explored the metaphor of “data as oil”. Like oil, raw data... Read more »