Workshop: How to Think Like a Librarian

Have you ever bookmarked a site only to go back later and not be able to find that site in  your bookmarks? And then, have you ever bookmarked a site twice–only to wonder how you could have tagged it the way you did?

Have you wondered how, when you have hundreds of thousands of source files in your content library, you will find the right content to reuse?

Have you wondered about effective metadata tagging across a diverse (or distributed) team?

With an ever-growing library of content, lots of people wonder how to address this complexity. Specifically, technical publications staff members are often concerned about creating taxonomies that improve search-ability for:

• Authoring staff so that content can be found quickly, improving the speed at which documentation is assembled and delivered to the customer
• Customers so that they can find the relevant information quickly, speeding accurate completion of their task and generally improving the user experience with documentation products

These are two distinct groups of searchers, and only a subset of all the searchers looking for your content. The challenge has direct, immediate impact on productivity and confidence of staff members, effective reuse strategies, and best practices for designing processes for metadata markup.

In this class, we will talk about the foundation of library science, collation, and how these strategies can help:

1. Create Custom metadata for Dynamic Documents
2. Support the exchange of custom metadata with source content files and fragment files
3. Develop taxonomies to support multiple search criteria

Learn key strategies that will put you in the best position to execute effectively so that you and your team can meet the increasing demands of creating, managing, and distributing content.

Workshop: Thinking like a librarian - Applying categorization strategies to technical content @ TC Camp 2013

About the Presenter

Liz Fraley, founder of Single-Sourcing Solutions, has worked in both high-tech and government sectors, developing and delivering technical design and strategy of authoring and publishing solutions as a Single-Source/XML Architect/Programmer. Specializing in practical development and deployment, she advocates designing architectures that directly improve organizational efficiency, productivity, and interoperability. She’s the founder of TC Camp, the unconference for content creators, consumers, and the people who support them. If you ask her, she’ll say she’s a gardener who’s happiest when those around her are flourishing.

View the Slides

This was a workshop at TC Camp January 2013. This same material was covered in the TC Dojo session: Concepts and Techniques of Library Science (3-part video & slides).

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