25 January 2015

Order Out Of Chaos: Metadata,Taxonomies,Thesauri,TopicMaps

Businesses face an insurmountable data and needs are constantly growing. Knowledge representation is playing an ever more important role in harnessing domain context for deriving useful information metaphors. In order to achieve understanding, one has to open the window to the different forms of metadata semantics. Semantic Data is already playing an important role in providing better findability and for annotating content. However, semantics in all forms are going to be playing an even greater role for the emergence of Web 3.0 and connected web of data. Big data requirements pose a massive dilemma for enterprises as they look for ways of gaining more efficiency, productivity, reuseability, and insight. Semantics hold the key to unlocking many such information gains. As a result, big data professionals are already seeing high demand for their skills. But, librarians and information architects are also seeing massive interest in various industries. The field of semantic data is diverse requiring various domain expertise from linguists, taxonomists, big data technologists, data scientists, subject matter experts, to experienced software engineers. NoSQL has also opened the doors to more loosely connected storage and scaling requirements for unstructured data. Often software engineers have to put on many hats for roles as they embark on development of domain applications. Metadata is in everything that software engineers use as tools and platforms for transforming and building applications. It is also the starting point towards understanding and unlocking data to transform into an information gain. The following provides further resources as a professional field for learning metadata, the different design approaches, community defined specifications, and in the availability of tools.

The Accidental Taxonomist
TopicMaps
Introduction to Metadata
Metadata Demystified
Open Data Handbook
The Metadata Handbook
Understanding Metadata
The Metadata Manual
Ontology Alignment
Ontology Alignment Initiatives
Ontology Matching
The Semantic Web for Working Ontologist
The Semantic Web Primer
TaxonomyWarehouse
Tools for Taxonomies and Ontologies
Metadata: Organizing and Discovering Information
Taxonomy & Controlled Vocabulary (SIG)