Collective taxonomizing: A collaborative approach to organizing document repositories

  • Authors:
  • Harris Wu;Michael D. Gordon;Weiguo Fan

  • Affiliations:
  • Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23508, USA;University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

  • Venue:
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Keeping large, growing document repositories organized is a critical challenge. For example, the security failure prior to the 9/11 tragedy was partly due to the ineffectiveness of organizing documents shared among various intelligence organizations. Drawing on the success of Web 2.0 and theories from knowledge management, we argue that a shared document repository with no central organizer may benefit from collective taxonomizing: allowing community members to categorize documents with local document hierarchies and systematically coalesce those local hierarchies into a global taxonomy. Using a design science approach, we develop and evaluate a hierarchy coalescing algorithm. Empirical and analytical evaluation shows promise.