Dear All
(Long post and apologies for cross-posting)
Below is a summary of the results I got for my request which I posted to
the Records Management, Taxonomy and Web Info Management lists. Thanks to
those who responded to my request which was:
"I am doing a project which is looking at user-friendly ways of navigating
to documents which are on our University website, particularly those
documents which are in our FOI Publication Schema.
To achieve this, I am trying to find a list of some high-level category
terms that would be relevant to people using a university web site. These
key terms would be applied to documents on the web site, and users would be
able to browse the documents using the key terms. (An example of such a set
of category key terms is the Government Category List, which has 12 high
level terms, eg, arts, recreation and travel; education, careers and
employment; international affairs and defence.) With this in mind, I'd be
grateful if anyone out there is using or knows of some high level
categorisation terms that might be useful within a Higher Education
setting. I am aware of the JACS and HESA classification schemes, but these
are entirely based around study-area subjects (eg, geography, science) and
don't cover the administrative parts of university life (admissions,
finance), which web site users also want to find.
I also need a high-level list of document format descriptions, eg, form,
report, minutes, agenda, annual report, etc, if anyone has ideas about these? "
The results that I got from the three lists are:
Martin Nail from Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries,
suggested:
"for document types you might look at the e-GMS TYPE Encoding Scheme:
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/metadata_document.asp?docnum=
679 which is "a list of document and other types, designed for use by the UK
public sector". It has a central government bias, and I'm sure would
need modifying for HE use. It's intended as an encoding scheme for the
Dublin Core "Type" element ("format" is used for computer media types not
for bibliographic types)."
Shelley Hardcastle from Sainsbury's sent me some info about what a
university she knows of is doing:
"I know of one university that uses 6 high level terms for internal
administration:
External relations e.g. with government departments and other
academic institutions
Students e.g. student health, welfare, clubs and societies
Academic e.g. teaching subjects, examinations, academic governance
Finance e.g. trusts, fees, accounts, audit, investments
Staffing (otherwise known as Human Resources or Employee
relations) e.g. recruitment, pension schemes, rates of pay, industrial
relations
Organisation and administration e.g. charter and statutes,
buildings maintenance, buying equipment"
Reynold Leming from Mint Business Solutions Ltd suggested:
"Have you seen Taxonomy Warehouse? http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/ This
can
lead to some useful sign-posts.
Regarding information types, there is the Dublin Core vocabulary scheme
http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/ and the e-gms encoding scheme
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/Encoding_scheme_type_v1_2002_12.pdf"
Lynne Skipsey at LSC National Office suggested, "You may also find the
general headings in the JISC records retention schedule useful for your
purposes - see attached link
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=srl_structure" and the British
Education Index http://brs.leeds.ac.uk/~beiwww/beil.html.
Gerry Dane at University of Newcastle: "User the JISC Study of the Records
Lifecycle at www.jisc.ac.uk/recman/
then click on reports. I've no doubt that this document will eventually
form the basis on many classification schemes across the sector and will
provide the high level categories you're looking for."
Helen Setchell from University of Nottingham sent me a fantastic and very
useful list of document types they have identified at Nottingham. I won't
copy them all here, as it will make this post too long.
Mary Hill from Sheffield Hallam University: "Have a look at the Contents
Menu on our Staff Intranet: http://staff.shu.ac.uk"
All very useful, thanks again.
Sarah
Sarah Agarwal
Project Manager (Usability)
Internet Developments Group
Institute for Learning and Research Technology
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
University of Bristol
8-10 Berkeley Square
Bristol BS8 1HH
+44 (0) 117 928 7192
