Searching for the Needle in the Haystack: Taxonomies, Tags and Targets

摘要

The Penn State Taxonomic Tags group, with representatives from Information Technology, Business Administration, and the Penn State Libraries, was formed to examine whether a taxonomic set of tags, systematically applied across the university’s Web pages, could (a) make finding specific pages easier from among the University’s greater than 500,000 Web pages, (b) simplify Web content management tasks and (c) prove useful over time as search engines continue to evolve and despite whether open source or commercial (and often, proprietary) search algorithms are employed. The University has had broad experience with several search engines, and currently holds a University-wide license for the Google Appliance. The Tags Group has developed recommendations that it believes will address issues found in the current environment and yet remain useful during and after what it expects will be the increasing adoption of Content Management Systems across Penn State University.