ELECTRONIC RESOURCE ANNOTATION

• US 20100332478A1
• Filed: 03/31/2009
• Published: 12/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Original Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Inventors: Healing, Alexander L., Duman, Hakan
• Granted Patent: US 8,706,734 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/738
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/38 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

A distributed system is described in which resource utilisation decisions depend upon the categorisation of resource descriptions stored in the distributed system. In the principal embodiment, the resource descriptions are web service descriptions which are augmented with tags (i.e. descriptive words or phrases) entered by users and/or by web service administrators. A service taxonomy is constructed on the basis of the tags, and is subsequently used in suggesting tags to the user which the user might want to ascribe to the service in question. This leads to a more coherent and focussed set of tags in the system, which in turns results in better resource utilisation decisions and hence a more efficient use of the resources of the distributed system.

Claims

1. A method of electronic resource annotation comprising:

receiving, for each of a plurality of categories of resource, a category tag list of tags often applied to resources in that category;

receiving, from a user who has reviewed the resource, one or more tags the user attributes to that resource;

calculating on the basis of said one or more tags received from said user and said category tag lists, a degree of membership of the resource to each of said plurality of categories;

selecting two or more candidate categories to which the resource has the highest degree of membership; and

proposing further tags in the category tag lists of said selected candidate categories to said user.

2. A method according to claim 1 further comprising the step of recognising user selection of said one or more proposed further tags, and repeating said calculation, selection and proposal steps.

3. A method according to claim 1 wherein said category tag lists form a labelled taxonomy.

4. A method according to claim 1 further comprising the step of generating said category tag list from tags applied to resources by users.

5. A method according to claim 1 wherein proposing further tags involves emphasizing tags associated with said selected candidate categories.

6. A method according to claim 5 wherein said emphasis is achieved by presenting the user with more tags associated with said selected candidate categories than tags associated with other categories.

7. A method according to claim 1 further comprising the step of generating the category tag list from tags applied to resources by users.

8. A distributed system comprising one or more user terminals, an electronic resource store, a resource label store for storing, for each of said electronic resources, labels applied by users to said electronic resource, and communications links between said user terminal and said electronic resource data store and between said user terminal and said resource labelling store;

said distributed system further comprising a resource categorisation store which stores, for each resource, an indication of the degree of membership of said resource to a plurality of categories;

wherein each of said user terminals is arranged in operation to;

enable said user to select an electronic resource;

in response to said selection, to display said selected electronic resource on a display of the user terminal;

to receive via a user interface provided by the user terminal, textual labels which the user considers appropriate to said selected electronic resource; and

to send said textual labels together with an indication of said resource to said resource label store to enable said store to be updated;

said distributed system being arranged in operation to respond to a user selection of an electronic resource by finding on the basis of said one or more textual labels received from said user and the information stored in said resource categorisation store, two or more candidate categories to which the resource is most likely to belong, to select labels appropriate to said candidate categories and to send said labels to said user terminal;

said user terminal being further arranged in operation to present said user with said labels as proposals for labels to be applied to the selected resource.

9. A method of electronic resource annotation comprising:

receiving, for each of a plurality of categories of resource, a category tag list of tags often applied to resources in that category;

receiving, from a user who has reviewed the resource, one or more tags the user attributes to that resource;

selecting on the basis of said one or more tags received from said user and said category tag lists, one or more candidate categories to which said resource belongs; and

proposing further tags in the category tag lists of said candidate categories to said user.

10. A distributed system comprising one or more user terminals, an electronic resource store, a resource label store for storing, for each of said electronic resources, labels applied by users to said electronic resource, and communications links between said user terminal and said electronic resource data store and between said user terminal and said resource labelling store;

said distributed system further comprising a resource categorisation store which stores, for each resource, an indication of a category to which said resource is deemed to belong;

wherein each of said user terminals is arranged in operation to;

enable said user to select an electronic resource;

in response to said selection, to display said selected electronic resource on a display of the user terminal;

to receive via a user interface provided by the user terminal, textual labels which the user considers appropriate to said selected electronic resource; and

to send said textual labels together with an indication of said resource to said resource label store to enable said store to be updated;

said distributed system being arranged in operation to respond to a user selection of an electronic resource by identifying one or more candidate categories for said resource using the information stored in said resource categorisation store, and to select labels appropriate to said one or more candidate categories and to send said labels to said user terminal;

said user terminal being further arranged in operation to present said user with said labels as proposals for labels to be applied to the selected resource.