I recently read Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web (2008), by Gene Smith. Smith dives into tagging as a method for adding metadata to resources, which in turn increases the organization and findability of the resources. Traditional help authoring tools categorize resources through folders (a carryover from Windows folders), whereas web platforms typically use tags. Tags are actually a quick and easy way to attach metadata … more »

In the last post, I argued that topic-based navigation systems generally fail for users. Topic-based navigation has some merits, such as allowing users to see topics in context, to discover other topics through browsing, and to provide one perspective on the organization of the material, but topic-based navigation shouldn’t be the only means of navigating the content. Another way to allow users to find your … more »

A few years ago, I wanted to better understand content management, so I picked up Managing Enterprise Content, by Ann Rockley, and read it through. It opened my eyes to a lot of new concepts. Ann is one of our field’s leading experts in content management. She’s now expanding in to something she calls “intelligent content.” Intelligent content is a concept that builds on other … more »