Knowledge tags

A knowledge tag is a type of meta-information that describes or defines some aspect of a data resource (such as a document, digital image, relational table, or web page). Knowledge tags are more than traditional non-hierarchical keywords or terms. They are a type of metadata that captures knowledge in the form of descriptions, categorizations, classifications, semantics, comments, notes, annotations, hyperdata, hyperlinks, or references that are collected in tag profiles. These tag profiles reference a data resource that resides in a distributed, and often heterogeneous, storage repository. Knowledge tags are a knowledge management discipline that leverages Enterprise 2.0 methodologies for users to capture insights, expertise, attributes, dependencies, or relationships associated with a data resource. It generally allows greater flexibility than other knowledge management classification systems.

Types of knowledge tags

Capturing knowledge in tags takes many different forms, there is factual knowledge (that found in books and data), conceptual knowledge (found in perspectives and concepts), expectational knowledge (needed to make judgments and hypothesis), and methodological knowledge (derived from reasoning and strategies). These forms of knowledge often exist outside the data itself and are derived from personal experience, insight, or expertise.

Knowledge tags manifest themselves in any number of ways – conceptual knowledge tags describe procedures, lessons learned, and facts that are related to the information resource. Tacit knowledge tags, manifests itself through skills, habits or learning by doing and represent experience or organizational intelligence. Anecdotal knowledge, is a memory of a particular case or event that may not surface without context.

Knowledge can best be defined as information possessed in the mind of an individual: it is personalized or subjective information related to facts, procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations and judgments (which may or may not be unique, useful, accurate, or structurable). Knowledge tags are considered an expansion of the information itself that adds additional value, context, and meaning to the information. Knowledge tags are valuable for preserving organizational intelligence that is often lost due to turn-over, for sharing knowledge stored in the minds of individuals that is typically isolated and unharnessed by the organization, and for connecting knowledge that is often lost or disconnected from an information resource.

History and context

Knowledge tags are an extension of keyword tags. They were created by Jumper 2.0, an open source Web 2.0 software platform released by Jumper Networks on 29 September 2008. Jumper 2.0 was the first enterprise social bookmarking platform to use a method of expanded tagging for knowledge capture.

Tagging has gained wide popularity due to the growth of social networking, photography sharing and bookmarking sites. These sites allow users to create and manage labels (or “tags”) that categorize content using simple keywords. The use of keywords as part of an identification and classification system long predates computers. In the early days of the web keywords meta tags were used by web page designers to tell search engines what the web page was about. Today's tagging takes the meta keywords concept and re-uses it. This time it is the viewers who add the tags to the web page but this time they are not hidden. The tags are clearly visible, and are themselves links to other items that share that keyword tag. The social bookmarking site Delicious, in 2003, provided a way for its users to add "tags" to their bookmarks that enabled them to share webpages with other users and to search based on the particular tags. Flickr allowed its users to add free-form tags to each of their pictures, enabling a bottom-up user driven approach that made the pictures easily discoverable. The success of Flickr and the influence of Delicious popularized the concept, and other social software websites – such as YouTube, Technorati, and StumbleUpon – also implemented tagging. Most media player programs, such as iTunes or Winamp, allow users to manually edit tag and song file information. They can edit many advanced fields, including composer, release year, etc. Most players can automatically look up CD information from Gracenote — a database that contains track information for millions of CDs.

See also

• Collective intelligence
• Concept map
• Enterprise 2.0
• Enterprise bookmarking
• Explicit knowledge
• Information ecology
• Knowledge representation

• Knowledge transfer
• Metaknowledge
• Ontology
• Organisational memory
• Semantic web
• Tag cloud
• Tag (metadata)
• Web 2.0

others

• Collective unconscious
• Human-computer interaction
• Social network aggregation
• Enterprise social software
• Expert system
• Knowledge
• Knowledge base
• Knowledge worker
• Management information system
• Social network
• Social software
• Sociology of knowledge
• Tacit Knowledge

References

• Nonaka, Ikujiro (1994), "A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation", ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/ Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994: 14–37, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=889992 
• Wigg, Karl M (1993), "Knowledge Management Foundations: Thinking About Thinking: How People and Organizations Create, Represent and Use Knowledge", Arlington: Schema Press: 153, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=889992 
• Alavi, Maryam; Leidner, Dorothy E. (1999), "Knowledge management systems: issues, challenges, and benefits", Communications of the AIS 1 (2), http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=374117 
• Sandy, Kemsley (2009), "Models, Social Tagging and Knowledge Management #BPM2009 #BPMS2’09", BPM, Enterprise 2.0 and technology trends in business, http://www.column2.com/2009/09/models-social-tagging-and-knowledge-management-bpm2009-bpms209/