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Mixing It Up: Developing and Implementing a Tagging System for a Content-Rich Website Which Uses Aggregated Content from Multiple Sources
Andrew Lewis, Victoria and Albert Museum, United Kingdom
Abstract
In 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum website had a very large amount of in-depth content including museum content and user-generated features. This presented a challenge in connecting users with site content that they may not have been aware of. In January 2011, the Museum made live a beta version of its redesigned website which aimed to address this issue. The new site moved away from a hierarchical navigation model to a dynamic concept-driven one. This aimed to collect and present content relevant to the user's subject of interest. A central method in achieving this was the development of a tagging system to classify Web content so that it would aggregate as required. This paper looks at the reality of developing and implementing a bespoke tagging system that could be effective for users yet simple enough to use for staff who are not specialist classifiers. The human issues for staff in developing the system are discussed, with some early results and feedback from the early beta-testing period. It is hoped the paper will offer insight into what happens in practice when using tagging for real on a live website.
Keywords: tagging, content, staff, classification, management
Mixing it up: Experiences of managing and displaying aggregated content from multiple sources, combining editorial selection, subject classification using tagging and automated retrieval.
In January 2011, the Victoria and Albert Museum will relaunch its website, with a new design based upon a radically different approach to content which will make users the central focus of the site. It will do this by moving from a static hierarchical navigation structure to a dynamic concept-driven site which will gather the available content relevant to a user’s subject of interest.