Fresh & New(er)

Continuing on the additions from yesterday. Today we added the top three search terms for each object to the USER KEYWORD section of an object page. This section is where folksonomy tags can be added and deleted. Here is a 1960s raincoat for example. Why did we add this to the USER KEYWORDS section? What [...]

Take a look at the new ‘related searches’ feature on our collection search. Now a search for ‘glass‘ will these ‘similar searches’ – glassware vase bottles bowl bowls This result will change over time. Hopefully we will implement a timescale simulator in our upcoming ‘experimental’ browsing section which will allow users to view the changing [...]

Today we finally ironed out one of the major problems with the search engine on our OPAC2.0/collection database. There are still some tweaks to be done on the results, and the advanced search needs to implemented but the new search is much better than the original. If you have some spare moments and feel like [...]

danah boyd, Cameron Marlow, Marc Davis and Mor Naaman, all of Yahoo, explore social tagging in detail in their paper presented to ACM/Hypertext06 in Denmark. Of particular note are the sections on system design and user incentives which cover the differing types of systems and methods behind different implementations of tagging. They also suggest that [...]

A few weeks back I posted an initial chart showing distributions of object usage on our OPAC2.0. Here’s a quick updated chart but done with logarhythmic scales on both axes. MS Excel seems to only cope with 32,000 values on one axis so it cuts off artificially at 32,000 (out of 55,134 objects viewed of [...]

Lynda Kelly at the Australian Museum has relayed some reporting on tagging from a recent Web Usability seminar. (Lynda is part of an ARC project we are collaborating on.) Roger Hudson took us through a brief history of classification and taxonomy(Linnaeus I think, Dewey, etc etc), making mention of an interesting Indian historical figure who [...]