the intersection of virtual organizations and the library: a case study

The Intersection of Virtual Organizations andthe Library: A Case Studyby Jake Carlson and Jane Kinkus YatcillaAvailable online 19 March 2010

The proliferation of virtual organizations ischanging the nature and practice of

research. These changes present a challengeto Libraries, as their traditional roles andservices do not translate well to virtual

organizations. However, virtualorganizations also offer opportunities for

librarians to participate in shaping the nextgeneration of information discovery and

management systems. This case studydescribes a project conducted by thePurdue University Libraries to assist

CAT-hub, a developing virtual organization,in creating a set of tags for information

discovery and site navigation.The methodology and processes used todevelop and implement these tags are

described in detail.

Jake Carlson, Data Research Scientist,Purdue University Libraries, West Lafayette, IN, USA

<jrcarlso@purdue.edu>;Jane Kinkus Yatcilla, Mathematical Sciences Librarian,Purdue University Libraries, West Lafayette, IN, USA

<jkinkus@purdue.edu>.

192 The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 36, Number 3, pages

INTRODUCTIONThis article describes collaboration between a developing virtualorganization, CAT-hub, and the Purdue University Libraries. The Centerfor Assistive Technologies (CAT), the developer of CAT-hub, is aninterdisciplinary research center housed within the Regenstrief Centerfor Health Care Engineering at Purdue University. The CAT-hub site willbe used as ameans to bring together diverse communities with varyinginterests and expertise to share their information, resources, knowl-edge, opinions, etc., in an online environment. The administrators ofCAT-hub recognized early on the challenge of constructingmechanismsto help users navigate the CAT-hub platform effectively and discovercontent relevant to their needs. The Center for Assistive Technologiesinitiated a partnership with the Libraries to address this challenge,through developing a foundational set of descriptive tags for use withinCAT-hub. These tags were developed from a controlled vocabularydesigned by the Libraries to reflect the types of content likely to bepresent in CAT-hub and the diverse nature of CAT-hub's users.

VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS AND LIBRARIESThe advent of high-performance computing, ready access to high-bandwidth networks, and the capacity to storemassive amounts of datais driving dramatic changes in the nature and practice of scientificresearch. These technologies, collectively referred to as cyberinfras-tructure, are providing the tools and capabilities that enable researchersto ask new questions and explore areas of inquiry that were previouslyimpossible to conduct or even conceive of in some cases. The prolifera-tion of cyberinfrastructure in turn is fueling the development of virtualorganizations. The National Science Foundation defines virtual organi-zations broadly as “a group of individuals whose members andresources may be dispersed geographically and institutionally, yetwho function as a coherent unit through the use of cyberinfrastruc-ture.”1 This definition of virtual organizations encompasses collabora-tories, e-Science or e-Research, virtual research environments, dis-tributed workgroups or virtual teams, virtual environments, and otheronline communities. Research-based virtual organizations tend to beformed around a shared infrastructure, data, software, and other re-sources that enable scientific inquiry and analysis to take place online.

The impact of virtual organizations on scientific practice goes beyondsupporting new types of research explorations. Virtual organizations arealso having a dramatic effect on the culture of research and how it ispracticed. Under this new paradigm, the traditional model of a solitarypractitioner in a physical laboratory gives way to a more open,collaborative approach. In addition to providing tools and resources forany of its members to use, virtual organizations also typically offer themeans to communicate and share one's work with other members in theorganization. Moreover, many large-scale virtual organizations havearisen that are centered on addressing large and complex problems or on

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supporting a broad field of study that spans beyond a single discipline.Membership in these virtual organizations may be open to researchersfrom multiple disciplines to provide different perspectives on the issuesunder examination. Thus, in addition to enabling researchers acrossdifferent geographies and time zones to collaborate, virtual organizationsare enabling researchers from different disciplines to come together toform interdisciplinary research teams.

The nanoHUB, a virtual organization hosted by Purdue University,provides an example of how virtual organizations are impacting thenature and practice of scientific research.2 The nanoHUB supportsresearch and education in nanotechnology, the study of the control ofmatter at a microscopic or atomic level, through providing simulations,tools, scholarly papers, lectures, learningmodules, and other resources forusers through a portal-like interface. However, nanoHUB is more thanjust a gateway to resources, it also functions as a centralized location incyberspace where researchers, students, professionals, and others caninteract and collaborate with one another. NanoHUB provides users withthe ability to hold online meetings, to form their own groups, to uploadtheir own content or resources, and to rate or review existing content.NanoHUB has proven to be very successful and boasts more than 90,000users from all over the world.3

The proliferation of virtual organizations and the resulting changesin how research is being conceived, conducted, and conveyed aregenerating substantial challenges for academic libraries. Academiclibraries were developed to support traditional models of scholarlypractice and have been slow to adapt to changes. Collections offered byan academic library tend to be tied to the particular institution it serves,either because of the physical nature of the collection or because oflicensing restrictions placed on electronic databases by vendors.Staffing models in academic libraries tend to revolve around supportfor traditional disciplines with librarians serving as subject specialistsand as liaisons to academic departments. This model of library servicesand staffing breaks down when confronted by the trans-institutionaland interdisciplinary nature of virtual organizations. For example, whatif a team member's home institution does not subscribe to a neededelectronic resource?Who in the libraries will be responsible to identifyand address the needs of an interdisciplinary research center?

However, the widespread arrival of virtual organizations also pro-vides librarians with opportunities to develop more engaged relation-ships with the researchers they serve. Virtual organizations and theirmembers are not only consumers of information, they are producers aswell. The development of systems and tools to enable the developmentof meaningful connections and linkages between disparate sets ofinformation linkages for the purposes of discovery, collection, andanalysis is a common challenge for virtual organizations.4 Librarianshave opportunities to address this challenge by applying their skills andexperiences to the development of discovery andmanagement tools forcommunities within virtual organizations.5 Technology professionalsare designing solutions to address these issues; however, as they lackthe perspectives and skills of librarians, the solutions they devise maybe incomplete or incompatible with user needs. As Judith Wustemanwrote in a recent editorial, “…librarians find the process of determininguser requirements intrinsicallymore important and interesting than domany traditional computer scientists.”6

“. . .the widespread arrival of virtualorganizations also provides librarians withopportunities to develop more engaged

relationships with the researchers they serve.Virtual organizations and their members arenot only consumers of information, they are

producers as well.”

Librarians have a long history of taking disparate sets ofinformation, describing them and organizing them in ways thatunify them into a coherent collection, and building and maintainingsystems to make them discoverable and accessible for the long term.Although the nature of the information resources used and generatedby virtual organizations can be quite different from the materials thatlibrarians have traditionally worked with, many of the underlyinginformation needs of researchers working in this new environment,discovery, access, description, and organization, for example, remainthe same. Furthermore, virtual organizations are still a developingphenomenon and so there is still time for librarians to influence theireventual forms and capabilities in ways that would facilitate thewiderexchange and dissemination of information.

THE CAT-HUB PLATFORM

The purpose of the Center for Assistive Technologies is to improve thelives and help enable the independence of those with disabilitiesthrough the development and use of assistive technologies. Its statedgoals include the following: improving communication and collabo-ration on assistive technologies between users, caregivers, vendors,developers, and researchers; identifying best practices for AT productdevelopment and evaluation; and increasing visibility for assistivetechnologies and related issues.7 To achieve these goals, the Center forAssistive Technologies is developing CAT-hub, a Web-based platformto house a virtual community comprised of users, developers,providers, medical professionals, and others involved with orinterested in assistive technologies. The CAT-hub platform is designedto provide a means for these different groups to connect, communi-cate, and collaborate with each other online and to enable thesegroups to discover, access, share, develop, and respond to contentrelating to assistive technologies.

The underlying software powering the CAT-hub platform isHubZero, which was developed by the Network for ComputationalNanotechnology at Purdue University. The HubZero software serves asthe foundation for several virtual organizations already in existence,including the nanoHUB, and is planned as the foundation for severalnew “hubs” in the near future. One of the features of the HubZerosoftware is the ability for the users of a hub to generate and describecontent generated within the virtual community or external contentthat is uploaded into the Hub through the use of tags. These tags areused as descriptors for the content within the hub and help facilitatesite navigation and discovery of content. Tags may be assigned to anypage, content, or resource within the hub. Users may also add tags toexisting content when providing feedback about the content. As withthe other virtual communities running on HubZero software, CAT-hubwould employ user tagging as a principal mechanism for contentdiscovery and site navigation.

THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF TAGSOpen or free end-user-generated tags and their resulting folkso-nomies, the bottom-up classification structures composed of all tagson a site, have been a feature of various social networking sites sincearound 2004,8 and tagging has many proponents in the informationworld. Clay Shirky9 argues that the internet has made the need fortaxonomies and ontologies, formal, organized classification systemsused to organize information, almost obsolete. Instead, user producedtags offer a much more powerful and affordable means of organizingand finding information online. Hammond et al.10 described taggingas “noisy” but far more flexible, abundant, and much cheaper togenerate than taxonomies. Hammond also points out that unliketaxonomies generated by information professionals or field experts,tags represent the real-world terms that individuals seeking infor-mation would use to find content. Indeed, the flexibility of tags andthe ability to use more colloquial terms for description and searchingare often cited as the biggest advantage of tagging over more

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prescribed systems such as controlled vocabularies or taxonomies.The ability to tag documents, photos, and other documents provides adeeper level of engagement for users and a vehicle for highlypersonalized information management.11 Further, folksonomies aremore inclusive than taxonomies precisely because they reflect thevocabulary of the users and are able to incorporate new concepts andterms far more quickly.

Library science professionals have expressed some trepidation ofuser-driven tags and resulting folksonomies as an effective mecha-nism for discovery. Because folksonomies are composed of tagscreated by users, they are inherently uncontrolled, imprecise, andchaotic. Tags are often highly personalized, reflecting the needs andperspectives of the individual user that created it and, therefore, maynot function well as a means of describing content to other users.Many of the tags appearing in folksonomy-driven Web sites arebelieved to be “single-use,” meaning they appear only once on thesite, limiting their utility for information discovery.12 User-driven tagsoften use different words tomean the same thing (synonymy) and theuse of words that have multiple meanings (polysemy). Further,folksonomic sites generally do not provide formal rules for thedevelopment and use of tags, so there is potential for a folksonomy toburgeon with misspellings, slight variations, multiple tags fordescribing the same concept, singular and plural forms of the sameterm, nonstandard usage, and foreign words.13 Finally, tags in afolksonomy lack the hierarchical structures present in a taxonomy; noterm is broader, narrower, or even related to another. A folksonomy isessentially a flat, bottom-up vocabulary which hinders the identifi-cation of meaningful relationships between two or more tags.14 Thesestructural weaknesses of user-driven tags lead to ambiguities withinfolksonomies, making it difficult for a user to ascertain if they mayhave missed relevant information in their searching.

In an article comparing tags and taxonomies, Macgregor andMcCulloch emphasize that the problems with tagging primarilypertain to collaborative tagging and affect resource discovery amongcommunities of users, i.e., if tags are used only for personal informationmanagement, then there really is no problemwith uncontrolled, user-generated tagging. However, the very sites where tagging is widelyused, such as the photo storing and sharing site Flickr, are sociallyoriented sites that encourage the sharing of documents and tags. Andso while the limitations of collaborative tagging understandably makeinformation professionals unwilling to abandon taxonomic-basedsystems of knowledge organization and discovery, the ease of use,flexibility, and widespread adoption of tagging by popular socialnetworking sites ensure that both types of approacheswill continue tocoexist. Macgregor and McCulloch15 conclude by arguing thatlibrarians, given their knowledge and expertise in informationretrieval issues, should take a leading role in conducting research toinfluence the continued development of collaborative taggingsystems.

Currently, there are relatively few discussions on the potential ofintegrating elements of tags and taxonomies in the literature.Peterson16 takes a pessimistic view and asserts that a database thattruly integrates both subject cataloging and folksonomy does notseem feasible at this time. Her assertion stems from the observationthat traditional cataloging is rule-bound and limiting and folkso-nomies are open-ended, which ultimately renders them incompatiblewith each other. Sun17 states that taxonomies can happily coexistwith folksonomies but does not suggest any practical way to mergethe two schemes. She recommends that users who have greatersubject expertise spend some time adding folksonomic tags toimportant Web sites, such as health-related sites, to improvediscovery by other users. However, Sun also asserts that nonexpertend-user tagging helps valuable health information become moreaccessible to the public, since the terms used by nonexperts tend to bemore intuitive or employ more commonly used terminology.

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Rosenfeld18 is perhaps most hopeful in his supposition that “treating[controlled vocabularies and folksonomies] as major parts of a singlemetadata ecology might expose a useful symbiosis: encourageauthors and users to generate folksonomies, and use those terms ascandidates for inclusion in richer, more current controlled vocabu-laries that can evolve to best support findability.”

“. . .there are relatively few discussions on thepotential of integrating elements of tags and

taxonomies in the literature.”

THE PROJECT

As a part of fulfilling its goals and purpose, CAT-hub is designed toserve as a centralized access point for information about assistivetechnologies and other topics of interest to the disabled and theirrelated communities. Therefore, it is particularly important thatproviders of content to CAT-hub have the means to describe theircontent effectively and accurately to enable end-users of CAT-hub todiscover it and determine its relevance to their particular informationneeds. Recognizing the inherent weaknesses of tags, the adminis-trators of the Center for Assistive Technologies were wary of relyingsolely on user-generated tags as a navigation system and discoverymechanism for CAT-hub, especially in its early stages of development.

Seeking ways to improve the functionality and usability of the tagswithin CAT-hub, the administration of the Center for AssistiveTechnologies approached the Purdue University Libraries for assis-tance. The Libraries had developed a good working relationship withthe Regenstrief Center, the parent organization of the Center forAssistive Technologies, from assisting them in setting up collections oftheir papers in the Libraries institutional repository and other pastinteractions. The Libraries responded to the Center for AssistiveTechnology's request for help by drafting a project proposal togenerate a foundational set of tags for usewithin CAT-hub through thedevelopment of a controlled vocabulary. Existing taxonomies relevantto the work of the Center for Assistive Technologies would beidentified, reviewed, and used as a guide to develop a controlledvocabulary specifically for implementation as a foundational set oftags in CAT-hub. The utility of these tags would be tested by uploadinga broad range of sample content relevant to assistive technologies intoCAT-hub and assigning the controlled vocabulary tags to this content.Based on the results of this testing, the tags would be reviewed andrevised accordingly and then made openly available for use in CAT-hub. The deliverables from this project would include a set ofcontrolled vocabularies, the implementation of these vocabularies astags with CAT-hub, a description of how the controlled vocabulariesand resulting tags could be used, and documentation of the work thatwas performed. The Center for Assistive Technologies accepted theproposal and provided the necessary funding for the project.

GETTING STARTEDOnce the project was accepted, the Libraries formed a project team tocarry out the proposal. The Libraries' Data Research Scientist, who hadprevious experience in designing and carrying out applied researchprojects, was enlisted as the project manager. The MathematicalSciences Librarian, who has a background in medical librarianship aswell as a familiarity with controlled vocabularies used in the medicalfield, was recruited to the project. Funding for the project includedmonies to hire two graduate student assistants. One graduate studentfrom the linguistics department who had prior experiences workingwith and developing ontologieswas hired. The other graduate studenthired for the project came from the education department and had

hands-on experiences in working with assistive technologies andpopulations with disabilities.

After the project team had been assembled, the next step inlaunching the project was to meet with the senior administration ofCAT-hub towork out the details of the project, to learnmore about themission and goals of CAT-hub, to learn where the CAT-hub platformwas in the development process, and to identify the immediatepriorities that would need to be addressed.

From this initial meeting, the project team gathered the followinginformation to guide its work:

• In developing the controlled vocabularies for CAT-hub, the teamshould focus on breadth rather than depth. Creating too manycontrolled vocabulary tags for CAT-hub would be counterproduc-tive at this time.

• Initially, the language used in creating the controlled vocabularyshould be geared toward assistive technology vocational profes-sionals who have some knowledge, background or experiencewith assistive technologies. The controlled vocabulary tags willhelp to address their need for discovering information on ATthrough the CAT-hub to enable them to better counsel theirclients.

• However, the controlled vocabulary terms are needed in part tobridge gaps between user groups (AT users, medical staff, vendors,researchers, etc.). One of the objectives of developing thesecontrolled vocabulary based tags is to empower lay persons sothat they will be able to easily identify what is available and whatthey can derive from CAT-hub. Therefore, although the tags will begeared for an audience with some assumed familiarity withdisabled communities and assistive technology fields, the termi-nology used cannot be overly technical or obscure.

• Content types in CAT-hub will consist of more than justinformational resources. Other types of expected content willinclude directories of government and nonprofit agencies thatoffer assistance or provide support and resources to the disabled.Content within CAT-hub will likely include information aboutagencies providing legal, health care, funding for assistivetechnologies, and other services.

• The CAT-hub administrators are seeking to create an environmentwhere content is easy to discover and access. In addition tocarrying out the project, the CAT-hub administrators asked theproject team for their recommendations for improving the use andcontinuing the development of the controlled vocabulary basedtags.

From this initial meeting with CAT-hub administration and fromreviewing the documentation for the CAT-hub platform, the projectteam decided to focus their efforts on generating a controlledvocabulary for five broad types of disabilities. These five categorieswere vision, hearing, mobility, speech/language, and cognition/learning disabilities. Developing controlled vocabularies for taggingcontent within these five categories of disabilities would have thegreatest potential impact and benefit for CAT-hub given their state ofdevelopment at the time. The project team also recognized early onthat some of the controlled vocabulary terms for tags needed todescribe and organize the types of content residing within CAT-hubwould fall outside of these five categories, such as information abouthealth insurance or disability law. Therefore the project team createda sixth category titled cross-cutting as a means of includingcontrolled vocabulary terms that would enable the description ofimportant topics that were too broad to fit into one of the other fivecategories.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCANS

The next stage in this project was for the project team to acquire abase level of knowledge and familiarity in three areas: existingcommunities of support for populations with disabilities, existingassistive technologies, and relevant controlled vocabularies. Eachmember of the project team was assigned at least one of these threeareas to explore, based on their background and expertise, and taskedwith reporting back to the team their findings and recommendationsfor moving forward. All three environmental scans were conductedsimultaneously during the first month of the project. The progress ofthe project team's explorations and the results of these environmentalscans were documented and shared through an internal departmentwiki site that was accessible and editable by all team members. Giventhe limited amount of time available for this project, theseenvironmental scans were meant to demonstrate a broad represen-tation of the nature and types of existing resources, rather than acomprehensive review.

The first area of exploration was the existing communities ofsupport for the five categories of disabilities that would be initiallyaddressed through CAT-hub: vision, hearing, mobility, speech/language, and learning/cognition. Developing an understanding ofthese communities centered on identifying and comprehending theneeds of these communities, along with the current environment ofservices and resources available for these populations. This infor-mation would be used to guide the work of the project team indeveloping the controlled vocabulary. Members of the project teammethodically explored agency Web sites and other resource-basedWeb sites that were either disability-, service-, or socially orientedto learn more about the demographic groups that would likely beusing and contributing to CAT-hub content. These Web sites wereanalyzed by the following criteria or features: the nature of theorganization or community, target audience, the services andfeatures offered, and the types of information provided. Predictably,the content of these Web sites varied widely; nevertheless, thegroup became aware of broad patterns and overall trends in thenature of the content and offerings, as well as sources with potentialfor inclusion in CAT-hub.

The second area of exploration for the project teamwas to identifythe existing assistive technology products that were currentlyavailable for each of these five communities. The aim of thisenvironmental scan was not only to learn more about the productsthemselves but to get a better sense of the needs that the productswere designed to address. The project team also sought to learn howassistive technology products had been categorized and described bytheir manufacturers or producers. Here, too, the types of products andpurposes for the products varied widely, but the project team wasable to gain a broad sense of the current assistive technologies marketand the nature of the types of products being offered or developed.This information was invaluable in directing the subsequent work increating controlled vocabularies.

The third area of exploration undertaken by the project team wasto investigate existing controlled vocabularies that appeared to havesome relation to this project and that could potentially be mined foruseful terminology for the CAT-hub tags. To accomplish this task,members of the project team generated a list of existing controlledvocabularies, glossaries, thesauri, categorizations, descriptions, etc.,that were identified as having some relation and relevance to CAT-hub. The expectation was that no single existing controlled vocabu-lary could solely be applied to the CAT-hub platform given the broadand diverse nature of CAT-hub's anticipated content and audiencewasconfirmed early on in the course of conducting this environmentalscan. Therefore, multiple vocabularies were closely reviewed andexamined to determined if they could be applied for the purposes ofthis project and, if so, how and to what extent.

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“The development of controlled vocabulariesfor each of the five categories of disabilities:vision, hearing, mobility, speech/language,

learning/cognition, as well as the cross-cuttingcategory, took place over several stages.”

CREATING CONTROLLED VOCABULARIES

The development of controlled vocabularies for each of the fivecategories of disabilities, namely, vision, hearing, mobility, speech/language, learning/cognition, as well as the cross-cutting category,took place over several stages. The initial stage was to decide which ofthe existing controlled vocabularies that the project team hadexamined during the environmental scan phase of the project toemploy as the primary references for the development of controlledvocabulary for tags within CAT-hub. The four controlled vocabulariesselected by the project team for this purpose were:

• Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)—The MeSH-controlled vocab-ulary is primarily geared toward serving the needs of medicalprofessionals.19

• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)—The LCSH controlledvocabulary is designed to be broadly accessible to the generalpublic.20

• International Standard 9999:2007 - Assistive products for personswith disability. Classification and terminology—This ISO standardprovides an organizational structure for assistive technologyproducts from the viewpoint of a product vendor or developer.21

• AbleData—AbleData is an online directory of services andresources relating to assistive technology. It is well known andacknowledged as a useful source of information among thedisabled communities and the professionals that work withdisabled populations.22

After deciding on these four controlled vocabularies as guides, theproject team returned to the environmental scans of communities ofsupport and assistive technology products to identify the concepts oritems that would be need to be included in the controlled vocabularyfor CAT-hub. The team then searched through the four controlledvocabularies to investigate how a particular item or concept wasidentified, addressed, and described.

Using a combination of the four related but distinctive controlledvocabularies provided a broad perspective of possible terms andapproaches to employ. Conflicting approaches to concepts and itemsbetween two or more of the existing controlled vocabularies werecommon. In such cases, the approach that appeared to best addressthe intended audiences of CAT-hub and the needs that they werelikely to have was selected. In cases where the concept or item wasnot addressed adequately in any of the existing controlled vocabu-laries for the purposes of CAT-hub, the team developed its ownapproach.

In developing the terminology for the controlled vocabularies ineach of the five disability categories, the project team sought toprovide coverage of the medical conditions related to the disability,and the types of assistive technologies designed to address theseconditions. The guidelines to generating terms for use as tags wasinformed by both the team's environmental scans and the represen-tation of the term in the existing controlled vocabularies. A particularchallenge in developing the controlled vocabularies was the restric-tion placed on the number of terms that could be generated. In

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negotiations with the CAT-hub administrators, the project team wasasked to limit the number of terms to between 20 and 25 for eachcategory. In attracting new users, the administrators wanted toachieve a balance between offering a set foundational set of tags touse, without overwhelming users with too many options before theybecome acclimated with CAT-hub. Given this restriction, and thatbreadth was more important than depth for the tags, the project teamplaced emphasis on incorporating common terms into the controlledvocabulary while providing the greatest coverage with the leastredundancy.

The sixth category, cross-cutting, was a critical addition to thestructure of the controlled vocabularies because it provided a meansto generate tags that had potential application across multipledisabilities and assistive technologies. Example of tags that couldapply to several or all of the disability categories mentioned includeadvocacy, government services, health care, etc. The tags chosen forthis category primarily represented the most frequently identifiedtypes of services provided on the service-orientedWeb sites as well asthe topics most commonly seen on community support pagesidentified during the environmental scans.

Naturally, in the process of collecting potential terms andconstructing their interrelationships, the project team generatedmany more terms than were feasible or advisable to implement astags in CAT-hub at this early stage of its development. In striving tocreate a balance between addressing a broad list of topics withoutgenerating a long list of tags, the controlled vocabularies requiredongoing review and revision as they were being developed. Duringthat revision process, many potential tags were reconsidered andremoved. The decision to remove a tag relied primarily upon threecriteria: redundancy, technicality, or overspecificity. A tag wasdeemed redundant if similar wording could be found elsewhere inthe controlled vocabulary, or if similar content was already taggedusing simpler, more effective means. Tags were also removed if theywere more technical in nature, such as a medical term for a commoncondition. In choosingwhich tags to keep, a higher priority was placedon usability than on medical precision, i.e. a tag is ‘better’ if it iscommonly used andwould be easily recognizable to CAT-hub users, incontrast to if it is used primarily by medical professionals. A relatedbut separate issue is overspecificity. Tags were also removed if theyprovided a level of detail for a concept or product that was notsufficiently broad as to make it applicable to multiple instances ofcontent. An example of a tag deleted due to overspecificity might be aspecific model of a hearing aid.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN TERMS

Early on in the process of developing the terminology for tags, theproject team recognized the need to develop cross-referencesbetween terms within a disability category as well as betweenterms in different categories. Developing cross references betweenterms in the same disability category would address the connectionsbetween medical conditions and assistive technologies. Cross-references were desirable across categories to identify the connec-tions and relationships between different types of medical condi-tions. The need to identify these relationships was particularlyapparent in generating controlled vocabularies for the relatedcategories of hearing and speech/language and, to a lesser extent,the mobility and cognition/learning disabilities categories. AlthoughCAT-hub in its early phase of development cannot yet hyperlink therelationships between tags, the project team and the CAT-hubadministration saw future potential for using these relationshipsbetween terms. As CAT-hub continues to evolve, these relationshipscould be used to connect or associate terms in ways that will assistinformation seekers in discovering information related to theirparticular interests, as well as to provide them with a more completeunderstanding the universe of available resources. Therefore, the

project team decided to identify the relationships perceived betweenterms and to include these relationships as a part of the controlledvocabularies for CAT-hub. The utility of the controlled vocabularies isnot dependent upon these relationships, nor is the utility of CAT-hubin its current state adversely affected by including the relationshipsbetween tags. The types of relationships used by the project teamwere broader term (BT), narrower term (NT), related term (RT) ,anduse for (UF), which complies with ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005, Guide-lines for the Construction, Format, and Management of MonolingualControlled Vocabularies.23

TESTING CONTROLLED VOCABULARIES WITH CONTENT

After developing a set of controlled vocabulary for each of the sixcategories, the next stage of the project was to test their utility as tagsfor the CAT-hub platform. As the project team was building thecontrolled vocabulary, the project manager arranged a meeting withthe lead developer for the CAT-hub platform to discuss how tocoordinate the implementation of the tags into CAT-hub. This initialmeeting led to a close collaboration between the project team andthe lead developer, who started attending and actively participatingin weekly meetings. The willingness of the lead developer tocontribute her time and expertise was a key factor in the success ofthe project.

Two rounds of testing the controlled vocabulary as tags for use inCAT-hub were conducted by the project team. The first round oftestingwas carried out using a set of 44 items chosen randomly from acollection of information relating to assistive technologies providedby CAT-hub's lead developer. These materials included productcatalogs, information on organizations providing services to thedisabled, professional training, and other types of information.Initially, the project team had planned on using some of the materialsthat had been gathered through the environmental scans; however,the team wanted the testing process to center on the types of contentthat would be representative of what would be uploaded into CAT-hub. The lead developer had collected these materials with theintention of adding them to CAT-hub, and so the project team viewedusing these materials as a more realistic test of how the tags might beapplied. Four scholarly journal articles with relevant content wereadded to the pool of tested materials to examine the effectiveness ofthe tags in describing research-based content.

The first round of testing took place as the controlled vocabularyterms were still in draft form. This iteration of testing was meant toserve as an initial indicator of the applicability of the controlledvocabulary terms the project team had developed for CAT-hub. Thisfirst round of testing was conducted by a single member of the projectteam to provide the project team an early indication of theeffectiveness of the team's efforts. Because the materials were beingtagged either before or while the lists of controlled vocabulary termswere being compiled, the first test helped to inform the finalization ofthe tags for each of the six categories.

A second round of testing was performed in which the projectteam member who had conducted the first round went back andreassigned tags from the completed versions of the controlledvocabularies. In addition, a second member of the project team alsoassigned tags independently from the first member on the samematerials. The second tester completed her test on paper rather thanin CAT-hub so as not to be biased by the decisions made by the firsttester. Once the tags had been assigned, the project team conducted ablind comparison of tags that had been assigned. The purpose behindthe second round was to determine the reliability of the testing –

would two people assign the same tags to the same content?– and totest for the completeness of the vocabulary. The results of this testwere used as the basis for discussion among the project team on theutility of some of the tags, enabling the identification and eliminationof redundant or marginal tags.

The final component of the testing process was for the projectteam to review test results and the complete list of tags as a group. Theteam then discussed the relevance and appropriateness of the tags ineach of the six categories in light of the test results. A few extra tagsthat were not part of the initial list of tags were suggested andadopted as a result of the testing. Similar to the environmental scan,the results of tag testing were documented on the Libraries' internalwiki. The wiki enabled the team to update the controlled vocabulariesquickly and easily while providing us with themeans to document thechanges that had been made. After several iterative discussions, theproject team reached consensus about which terms would beincluded in the final draft of the controlled vocabularies.

IMPLEMENTATION

Once the testing was completed, a final draft of the controlledvocabularies was crafted. The controlled vocabularies, along withtheir identified relationships, were then extracted from the wiki anduploaded into the CAT-hub platform for use. Electronic copies of thecontrolled vocabularies from the project, along with a final report,were given to the CAT-hub administration. The final reportcontained a detailed description of the decisions, procedures, andwork that had been done by the project team, a list of recommenda-tions for continued development of tags within CAT-hub, and a“user's guide” to help users of the CAT-hub system design tags oftheir own.

The implementation of these controlled vocabularies as tags can beviewed on the CAT-hub portal (see Fig. 1). The HubZero softwareuponwhich the CAT-hub portal is built offers several different ways toorganize content. CAT-hub has chosen to group content by resourcetype (tutorials, professional training, products, reviews, services andorganizations, and research) and by user type (consumers, profes-sionals, innovators, providers, and researchers). Tags are designed tocut across these categories and can be assigned to any resourceuploaded or created in CAT-hub. The CAT-hub administration decidedto make the five categories of content, vision, hearing, speech,learning and cognition, and mobility, as tags themselves. These fivetags appear on the CAT-hub home page for users to access relevantcontent quickly. The main page of CAT-hub also enables users tobrowse the all of the tags within CAT-hub, or to view the mostfrequently used tags.

In addition to using tags for browsing, tags are also incorporatedinto the search functionality of CAT-hub. A search box is provided inthe upper right hand corner of the home page. Results from searchingare categorized and displayed according to their content type; tags areone of the categories listed (see Fig. 2). Click on the “tags” link takes auser to a list of the relevant tags (see Fig. 3). As one would expect,clicking on a tag in the results list takes a user to a listing of all of thecontent that has been tagged with the particular word or phraseselected. Currently, the HubZero software is not capable of using therelationships between the controlled vocabulary terms (BT, NT, RT,UF) as searchable links. Instead, CAT-hub lists any terms in text,identifying them as all as related terms, as a part of the search results.Although they are not hyperlinked, displaying these terms providessome guidance to users on other possible topics of interest. Clicking ona tag, either through browsing the list of available tags or from theresults of a search, takes a user to a screen displaying items connectedto that tag (see Fig. 4).

“In addition to using tags for browsing, tags arealso incorporated into the search functionality

of CAT-hub.”

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Figure 1A Screen Shot of the CAT-hub Portal—http://cathub.org.

Selecting tags is a part of the process of uploading content intoCAT-hub. Contributors to CAT-hub are guided through the uploadprocess through a series of screens that ask them to supplyinformation about the content. The tags screen enables users to selectone of the five overarching categories (vision, hearing, speech,learning and cognition, and mobility) as a focus area and then lets

Figure 2A Screen Shot of the Results from a Search for “Vision Aids.”

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users add additional tags if they choose to do so. Existing tags are notdisplayed on this screen; however, as a user types in a word or phrasein the “assigned tag” field, they are shown the existing tags that matchthe letters they have typed. For example, typing “vis” into the“assigned tags” field would bring up the existing tags “visiondisorders,” “vision loss,” “vision screening,” and any other tags that

Figure 3A Screen Shot of the Results from Clicking on the “Tags” Link.

beganwith the letters “vis” (see Fig. 5). Users are encouraged to selectexisting tags but are able to enter their own terms and phrases for useas tags. Users are not required to select an overarching category or tagfor the content they are uploading.

CONCLUSION

The controlled vocabulary-based tags have been fully implementedinto the CAT-hub portal. The tags are currently being used by CAT-hubcommunity members to describe the content they upload and todiscover content contributed by others. Unfortunately, the timeallotted for developing the controlled vocabulary-based tags did notpermit the formal user testing procedure. However, both the CAT-hubadministration and the authors are interested in examining how the

Figure 4A Screen Shot Displaying the Items Tagged as “Low Vision Aids.”

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controlled vocabulary tags generated by the project team are used andwhat user-generated tags are created to describe the content.

“It is anticipated that users will create theirown tags to describe the content they uploador existing content within CAT-hub in order to

describe the content in ways that are meaningfulfor their particular contexts and needs.”

The controlled vocabulary-based tags developed by the Librariesare meant to serve as a foundational navigational system to

Figure 5A Screen Shot Demonstrating How Tags are Assigned to Content as a Part of the Process of

Uploading Material into CAT-hub.

encourage the contribution of content and the use of the CAT-hubportal. It is anticipated that users will create their own tags todescribe the content they upload or existing content within CAT-hub to describe the content in ways that are meaningful for theirparticular contexts and needs. As time passes and the quantity oftags generated by users grows, the Libraries are interested inexamining how the controlled vocabulary tags the Librariesdeveloped as a foundational base for describing content andnavigating the CAT-hub portal compare to the tags generated byusers. Will the CAT-hub community adopt the foundational set oftags generated by the Libraries for their own content and, if so, towhat extent? How will the user generated tags compare to the tagsgenerated by the Libraries? Will the user-generated tags in CAT-hubbe more specific and include product names of assistive technol-ogies, or list medical conditions at a more granular level? Exploringthese and other questions within CAT-hub will help the PurdueLibraries to develop a better practical understanding of how virtualorganizations work and how librarians can contribute to theirfunctionality and use.

The rapid rise of virtual organizations is enabling people tointeract and collaborate with one another in a variety of new ways.By reducing the barriers of time and distance, virtual organizationsare having a profound effect on how research, teaching, andscholarly communication are being carried out. These changespresent significant challenges to academic libraries which tend tobe centered on and organized around addressing traditionalstructures and practices of teaching and research. However,individuals and communities within virtual organizations havetheir own set of information needs that must be addressed if theorganization is to be successful. As librarians strive to redefinethemselves to address the needs of researchers in a digital era, weneed to forge relationships with researchers practicing in virtualorganizations to gain a greater understanding of the nature of theirworkflows, interactions, and environment overall. As illustrated inthis case study, librarians possess a unique set of skills, knowledge,and perspectives that enable them to contribute to addressing theinformation needs of virtual organizations. Therefore, the questionis not so much whether librarians can contribute to thedevelopment of virtual organizations, but when, how, and towhat extent librarians will become involved.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

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12. Guy, Marieke and Emma Tonkin, “Folksonomies: Tidying up tags?”D-Lib Magazine, (January 2006). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january06/guy/01guy.html (accessed August 28, 2009).

13. Spiteri, Louise F. “The structure and form of folksonomy tags: Theroad to the public library catalog,” Information Technology andLibraries 26, no. 3 (September 2007): 13–25.

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17. Sun, BethDeFrancis. “Folksonomyandhealth informationaccess:Howcan social bookmarking assist seekers of onlinemedical information?"Journal of Hospital Librarianship 8, no. 1 (2008): 119–126.

18. Rosenfeld, Louis. “Folksonomies? How about metadata ecologies?”Louis Rosenfeld: Information Architecture & User Experience. (January

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