Matthew Knott

I was at a tri-authority collaboration meeting today, and had a chance to explain to people what I call the three-layer model for organising content, or the three-layer content organisational model to you and me.

Layer 1: Folders

At the top of the layer is the most rigid of structures, folders. Folders are great for organising things and keeping them tidy, but if you don't know off hand where a file is, you have to search, which is only useful if you know the document title or what it might contain. Folders are great for structuring information in a narrative sense such as documents > projects > regeneration project, but this relies on a well planned structure. 

Layer 2: Categories

A good bridging layer, categories, are very similar to folders, depending on how they are used. In fact it is very easy, especially in online content, to duplicate the functionality of folders but call it categories, using endless sub categories to contain documents. True categorisation should be high level. Where categories differ from folders is that they should be single level, and documents can exist in multiple categories, where as they can only exist in a single folder. Categorisation makes browsing to a documents location quicker, but there can be a larger volume of documents, so this can make pinpointing your required information harder.

Layer 3: Tags

Tagging is essentially structureless, categorisation on steroids. Tags represent both a documents content and it's meaning, implied or otherwise. There are hundreds of these little categories. Browsing would be difficult and time consuming, but search results are accurate and valuable. Tags should be added by a documents author, their tags represent what the document means to them, but tagging systems should allow others to add tags, building the documents repertoire for multiple perspectives. This variety of tags is what makes the search process more reliable and less linear.

Usage

Your documents should be floating objects, with the three layers all being implemented as views into your documents, this way you can provide the most complete user experience.

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