March 25, 2004
Mags - content IA
These are the notes Mags (Margaret Hanley) made for me during a mentoring session yesterday. I'm the kind of person who likes to have a structured approach to problem solving when I'm learning the art of doing something (that kata thing again) so this kind of 'step by step' way of thinking helps me. The content side of IA is currently the area of IA at which I'm weakest, so this is a good crib sheet to start my thinking process on the new project I'm taking on, known as 'The Creative Archive'.
Information Architecture – Content and Classification
Content Analysis is about looking for patterns in content and templates. There are levels of analysis e.g page vs object.Classification Analysis
Existing Class SchemesWrite these down:
- Metadata
- Existing on the Page (English Regions project had ‘Locations’)
Subject Knowledge
Example – Location Class Scheme
- Find:
- Exist already
- Gazeteers (for Geo-specific information)
- LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings)
- Exist already
- Compile Candidate Shemes
- Determine appropriate granularity of description (e.g. Village/Hamlet level, Postcode)
- Either Buy outright, Licence, License and Modify or Create the scheme from scratch
Content Objects
Think of a content object as the smallest amount of content placed into a content management system.Each content object has attributes that define the structure of the object. For example:
Article Object may have
- Title
- Lead Paragraph
- Body Text
Three Types of Metadata
1. Descriptive (“aboutness”)Controlled Vocabularies & Synonyms
- Subject
- Location
- Audience
- Proper Name
- Programme/Brand
- Historical time period
2. Intrinsic Metadata
Stuff you can pull out from the file e.g.
- File Name
- Fomat/Media type
- Bit Rate
- Duration
- Aspect Ratio
3. Administrative
CMS type information
- Author
- Time created
- Version
This is all pretty Polar Bear kind of stuff, but the book doesn't put it quite so succinctly, probably because it may encourage people to take a 'one size fits all' approach.
Posted by Ant at March 25, 2004 11:00 AM | TrackBack