Knowledge Organisation: Schweppes Australia - Case Study Example

Running head: KNOWLEDGE ORGANISATION Knowledge Organisation [Writer’s name] [Instituion’s name] Knowledge Organisation Introduction Today’s organisations require all kinds of knowledge. However the information has to be compatible when it comes to the creation, storage and re-use. In every kind of research, either corporate or academic the multifaceted nature of knowledge is often discussed. However, when the knowledge is obtained and organized, it can easily be used and accessed, when knowledge is acquired it must be stored in such a manner that it can be understood, indexed, accessed without difficulty. It must also be cross referenced, searched, linked, and usually stored for maximum benefit for the employees and other members of an organisation. Thus, the organisation of knowledge is the most important part of the entire knowledge cycle. In terms of an organisation’s intellectual capital, collective knowledge may be considered as their intellectual capital. As this kind of information is acquired from personal knowledge and other already existing organisational information resources, after arranging it, it is shared and then used or implemented by the employees- these at times even results in new information generated for the organisational memory (Hodge 2000). This report shall be based on the Scenario that you have just been employed as Information Manager of an imaginary research/study establishment either self-standing or as part of a larger organisation. And you recommend that the information content of such a portal should be organised formally, in this case, by implementing an all encompassing corporate taxonomy based on a faceted classification from which a thesaurus would be generated. The organisation which has been selected for the report is a soft drink company named Schweppes Australia. Schweppes Australia produces its own products as well as for PepsiCo in Australia. They produce 7up, Sunkist, Monster Energy. Apart from this they also produce drinks of P&N Beverages which they have acquired. The drinks they produce are Cool Ridge, Spring Valley fruit drinks and Fiji Water. Analysis Before analyzing the recommendations which are to be implemented in the above scenario it is important to understand the concept of knowledge organization and corporate taxonomy. The term knowledge organisation systems are used in order to utilize all kinds of methods for organizing information and promoting knowledge management. Such systems consist of classification and categorization schemes which have the ability to organize information at a general level, along with subject headings which may give detailed access, as well as authority files which are used for controlling different versions of important information (Alani etal 2000) . Such systems also consist of highly structured vocabularies, for instance thesauri, as knowledge organisation systems are meant for organizing information. Thus, the above given description and definition of knowledge organisation is extremely important to understand as the recommendations shall be based on this concept. Implication of Corporate Taxonomy in Schweppes Taxonomy is considered as a subject map of an organisation’s information. In this case scenario it will reflect Schweppes‘s industry, the task and responsibilities of the employees who will utilize the information, and the reason behind using the information. Thus the corporate taxonomy may be considered as a complete conceptual map. In this case it may also be considered as an information access tool, as well as a communications and training tool which also sheds light on the record, proficiency and inside information which may help them to improve their business operations (Beaulieu 1997). However, the taxonomy will have to provide special requirements and rationales before it can be implemented as a knowledge organisation system for Schweppes. Thesaurus The company’s knowledge system may be made in such a manner that it helps structure concepts by means of different kinds of semantic relationship. This may help when searcher as well as indexer are functioning at diverse levels of generality or have conflicting conceptualizations of a topic this kind of structure may provide pathways which let a searcher to use another person ’s terminology. This is a kind of knowledge organizing system which that combines an ‘entry vocabulary’ with a limited set of semantic relationships. Unlike a lot of classification systems it consists of controlled vocabulary of terms which are considered as synonyms for a notion (Davis 1996). Schweppes should give Scope notes for all the terms, this will define its application in as a thesaurus and how it can be implemented during the indexing process the company can also make other kinds of notes available, as warrant for including the term. Schweppes can also use Thesaurus for organizing information... in order for their knowledge organisation system to encompass a complete corporate taxonomy utilizing thesaurus is extremely important. The thesaurus is considered as the most common method of organizing information in any field. This will help Schweppes to improve their retrieval by means of vocabulary control as well as organizing their information. Vocabulary control will help the company to lessen ambiguity of natural language when the information regarding their products, their ingredients and contents is being retrieved or searched. Schweppes should keep in mind that while searching for information .while using uncontrolled terms, different terminology of an information which is not stored in the database may result in important documents to be missed. Thus, Schweppes will have to utilize basic controlled vocabularies in order to reduce ambiguity. Especially for their own products like cool ridge and Fiji water both are refreshing water products. By defining the scope of terms and more complex vocabularies it may provide a set of synonyms for every concept. The company should avoid busing the older method of older print-based thesauri as it was bases on controlled vocabulary element and were basically relied on the terminology. Schweppes should also avoid using only an alphabetically organisation of he information as at times it does not present the relationships systematically. to the above provided reasons Schweppes should follow today’s standards as gives the thesaurus with a concept based method and makes sure that there is a systematic display structured by semantic relationships. It also assures that the access mechanisms have a semantic structure. Schweppes should first have sound knowledge of the three thesaurus semantic relationships, these are Equivalence in which concept is associated with terms which in turn serve the function of effective synonyms). The second one is Hierarchical this provides broader concepts and the last one is which is Associative non-hierarchical and not related to any terms. Schweppes should consider the equivalence relationship for organizing it’s information as it associates a concept with a set of equivalent terms, as by me and of this relationship terms which are treated as synonyms makes retrieval quicker and easier. By using this method different subtypes may be made possible such as abbreviation or trade names. The thesauri may encompass a vast entry vocabulary of equivalent terms which may help searchers as well as indexers to help organize the controlled vocabulary indexing terms. Schweppes can use Thesauri to define a specific subject domain or family of products and can be large. The company can use them for descriptive indexing purposes related to their search systems. Schweppes may utilize it for indexing and searching purposes. Faceted Thesauri Faceted systems may help Schweppes to apply facet analysis to the procedure of synthesizing multifaceted descriptions. The word facet may be used in a lot of different methods this may result in some confusion. However if consider it in the context of Schweppes, it may refer to a set of basic categories and their combination keeping in mind the operation of the information or knowledge system. Schweppes must also consider the fact that usually the different facet dimensions are equally exclusive. Schweppes can combine single concepts from different facets when it wants to index their product or it’s ingredients. This may prove to be an easier and more rational method of indexing their products and other forms of information (Aitchison etal 2002). Even though nearly all thesauri consist of diverse hierarchies, they may not be regarded as faceted. If such a situation arises then Schweppes should not base it’s hierarchies on a rigorous method which is utilized for facet analysis and they should not use the hierarchies for the purpose of combination. Schweppes should keep in mind that all thesauri, they may even offer a controlled vocabulary for indexing as well as for their searching purposes. After this the process of faceted classification may be implemented, this helps to develop a hierarchical structure. Schweppes also has another option of information organisation in which it can use initial division of the domain through product or content while utilizing facet analysis for every information Schweppes may also use a method in which the whole thesaurus is structured via basic categories. The company should consider Thesaurofacet for it’s faceted thesaurus. It is the best option for them as in their case requires divided information equally among the classified display as well as the alphabetical listing. As they need indexing and organisation of knowledge and information regarding their products and contents an option which emphasizes on classified display as well as the alphabetical listing may be the best solution for them. Applications using Faceted Thesauri Schweppes should implement or follow Bates (2002) recommendations which state that if information is organized by facet indexing by means of the interface is helps in utilizing the facet, which are based on numerous user studies. The company may even implement Pollitt’s ‘view-based searching’ systems as it may provide them with the potential of browsing a faceted thesaurus as well as effectively combining terms from numerous facets to improve a query (Aitchison etal 2002) . Utilization of faceted classifications and thesauri in companies like Schweppes is quite effective for their information organisation. These applications and web interfaces may help Schweppes access a more broader view of facets as compared to the traditional way of organizing information , incorporating different characteristics or contents of their products. This may also consist of facets in form of basically pick lists. FACET FACET may also be utilized while organizing FACET‘s information. It may a application used for cultural heritage information however it’s semantic query expansion may help include the closely related concepts in the search. This is what makes it a good application for soft drink companies as well. In this application results are ranked starting from the least relevant results. The most important part of the application which may make it important for Schweppes is that the algorithm may easily be configured to allocate various traversal costs to diverse thesaurus relationships. For instance, associative relationships could be shown having a high cost although narrower relationships a low cost. This may also consist of an expansion of the associative relationship between the selected facets (Brooks 1997), in the same area where the query was shown as the part of the procedure while utilizing appropriate terms and this may also be implemented while indexing the product names and terms used for the contents . When the user is utilizing the database a situation may arise which might result in the expansion as an option when exact matches cannot be found. It may be hard to find exact matches for complex faceted queries and index descriptors (Cross 2000). This is known as Semantic expansion; it permits partially matching results with semantically related but not the same index terms. Use in Retrieval Pre- and Post-Coordination For Schweppes organisation of information faceted classification will be a better as compared to and a general thesaurus when it comes to retrieval of the information. The main reason behind this option may be that thesaurus usually are appropriate for post coordinated search tools, while faceted classifications is mostly based on pre-coordinated descriptions it’s objective of Indexing terms are not attached to in post-coordinated systems they tend to function on their own (Aitchison et al. 2000). Where as Pre-coordinated systems let the index terms function in one single string, thus, this makes specific indexing possible as it defines relations among index terms. Nevertheless, at retrieval it needs the accurate sequence of terms to be matched while searching the database for the information unless the company stores the terms separately this make the information de-coordinated during the retrieval process. The Zero Match Problems Schweppes should also consider using Multi-concept faceted descriptors as they are is highly specific and likewise faceted queries could be extremely specific. Nevertheless, Schweppes should also be prepared for the fact that they may cause problems during the retrieval process. For example in a AND-ed search chances retrieval may be less, it may even yield zero matches. The company must be careful while organizing their information as if the information is organized in the same precise combination of concepts, using general terms , the information may not unlikely be found in r in both query and index descriptor (Cross 2000). . Indexing System Using Faceted Thesauri The company may utilize The PRECIS pre-coordinated indexing system inorder to index it’s information. This system applies rules to its syntactic operators, so that numerous version of strings for alphabetic lookup may be generated on it’s own in. however if the company requires their information to be stored and organized on the computer the company may implement the Boolean search, while keeping in tact FACET system’s semantic expansion so that multifarious pre-coordinated accounts may generate ‘bestmatch benefits while Boolean search may only the yield ranked results (Aitchison et al. 2000). This may be the best option for Schweppes as it is based on the concept of modified ‘focus term’— in this case it may be contents and product names and category. If Schweppes was to extend this to make use of the syntax rules, the company would be able to implement to the application to precoordinated application settings. But, this may be a practical option only if this kind data is present. Even though instances of multifarious pre-coordinated thesaurus indexing may be found with great difficulty however in Schweppes such kinds of examples and data information is quite common. Conclusion It may be concluded that Schweppes is utilizing faceted thesauri for their organisation of information. From the analysis section it may also be concluded there is a possibility for utilizing the faceted thesauri along with the faceted classification system. Schweppes also can use the above mentioned system in pre- and post-coordinated systems and thus can yield prefect search and browsing applications. As Faceted thesauri is an important part of knowledge organisation systems and has always been utilized by the library community for the purpose of information retrieval applications. The fact that they give a semantic structure at a appropriate granularity for the common problem of search and retrieval makes it an ideal option for. Schweppes. References Aitchison, J., Gilchrist, A. and Bawden, D. (2000) Thesaurus Construction and Use: a Practical Manual, 4th edition (London: ASLIB) Aitchison, J., Gilchrist, A. and Bawden, D. (2002).Thesaurus construction and use: A practical manual. 4th ed. Chicago, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2002. Alani, H., Jones, C. and Tudhope, D. (2000) "Associative and spatial relationships in thesaurus-based retrieval". Proc. 4th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL2000), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer), pp. 45-58 Bates, Marcia J. (1979) "Information Search Tactics". Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 30, July, 205-214 Beaulieu, M. (1997) "Experiments on interfaces to support query expansion". Journal of Documentation, 53(1), 8-19 Brooks, T. (1997) "The relevance aura of bibliographic records". Information Processing and Management, 33(1), 69-80 Cross, P., Brickley, D., Koch, T.(2000): Conceptual relationships for encoding thesauri, classification systems and organised metadata collections and a proposal for encoding a core set of thesaurus relationships using an RDF Schema. Available in: http: //www.desire.org/results/discovery/rdfthesschema.html,   Davies, R. (1996) "Thesaurus-aided searching in search and retrieval protocols". Proc. 4th International Society of Knowledge Organization Conference (ISKO 1996), Advances in Knowledge Organization, 5, edited by R. Green (Frankfurt/Main: Indeks), pp. 137-143 Hodge, G. (2000) Systems of Knowledge Organization for Digital Libraries: Beyond Traditional Authority Files, The Digital Library Federation Council on Library and Information Resources http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub91abst.html Appendix Controlled vocabulary : Soft drinks BT Schweppes Australia softdrinks NT P&N Beverages NT 7up, NT Sunkist NT Monster Energy NT pepsico + Schweppes Australia (BT = broader term; NT = narrower term) Layout : in this case scenario alphabetical layout is very intuitive to use and allows the advantages of non-preferred terms and related links. A hierarchical presentation can be used to show terms in context. Entries Preferred term ; soft drinks UF : drinks Preferred term : Schweppes Australia UF: Schweppes Preferred term. pepsico Schweppes products UF: pepsico Prefered terms P&N Berverges products. Read More