Editorial
We've been struggling to organize things ever since Eve told Adam to clean up their garage and get rid of his trash. And for about as long, humankind has been trying to figure out the best way to organize stuff so we can find it later.
So, imagine the challenge of the librarian in the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt. By some accounts, the library housed half a million books (or more accurately, scrolls). The librarian had to catalog these books so people could search for relevant information. No computers, no card catalogs, not even paper. And yet, he managed to create an effective method that we still don't fully understand.
The librarian, Callimachus, employed classifying techniques we still use today, such as categorizing books into topics like rhetoric, law, epic and so on. These were further broken down into granular sub-topics, as minute as “banquets” and the “art of cake-making,” according to book historian Dennis Duncan. After that, books were then ordered alphabetically by the author's name. While this seems obvious now, assigning an order to letters of the alphabet was once a revolutionary idea, as the Facebook "Like button" or “infinite scroll” were just a few years ago.
Next, Callimachus assigned “metadata” to each book using fields like the author's birthplace, nickname, father's name, profession, as well as snippets from the first paragraph and the book's length. These metadata were written on a parchment “tag” and then tied to one edge of the scroll.
The books were then arranged on shelves by topic and subtopic and laid out one on top of the other in a pile. Each book’s tag hung over the edge of the shelf like a price tag.
To search for the right source for your inquiry, you would go to the appropriate shelf and peruse the tags hanging off the shelf.
If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Although Callimachus lived over 2,000 years ago, employees today still search for content using embedded metadata tags and can get a snippet view of a document to pick the right one without opening it.
While the world has moved on from parchment to paper to digital bits, we're still struggling with the age-old problem of finding important “stuff” quickly. Over the years, each age has tried to figure out how to deal with increasingly bigger piles of information afforded by better and faster information technologies, like the vertical file, the Wooten (pigeonhole) desk, and the Dewey decimal system/card catalog.
And then came computers. Computers offer the ability to vastly scale the amount of information we create, and network connectivity enables us to share that information with anyone, anywhere. Sending an email message to 1000 people is just as easy (and cheap) as sending it to one person. Didn't like the message? No problem. Make a few edits and send it again, even from a mobile phone while on the go. It has never been easier to create stuff than today.
With all this power to create and disseminate knowledge, you'd think we would have conquered the "I can't find stuff" problem. There are tools like Google and Enterprise Search, yet both routinely return (far) too many irrelevant results, causing us to wade through piles of electronic rubbish looking for what really matters.
It's Not Me, It’s You
The reason we haven't solved the 'too much stuff’ problem has less to do with technology and everything to do with human behavior, because technology can't guess what each of us sees when we all look at things differently.
Let’s consider something as simple as a computer monitor. A product specialist might look at the monitor as a collection of components that make up a bill of material, while a salesperson might look at the same item as a product to sell, while a project manager might see the same item as a tool needed to deliver a service. Each one of them would therefore tag the item differently, leading to a mismatch when searching for the item.
One approach is to allow everyone to tag freely, as they see fit. The problem here is a runaway problem of so many tags that they ultimately become meaningless. Another approach is to “force” people to look at things the same way by defining an organizational taxonomy. Because this is unintuitive, it only works in the most regimented and regulated industries where people have no choice but to conform.
Still Tagging It After All These Years
At the end of the day, the solution to finding stuff is quite simple. It is the implementation that is proving so difficult to pull off. So, let's take a page (parchment sheet?) from Callimachus' playbook (play 'scroll'?). The key to finding stuff can be summarized in three steps:
1. Capture: Store your information in a centralized location so that everybody who is entitled to view the information can physically access it. In today's business world, this means uploading information into an enterprise document system like Microsoft SharePoint or Teams, Box or Google Drive.
2. Classify/Categorize: Tag information so others can find it. We have already explained why this is so difficult, but technology can help overcome the human impediment. Instead of asking people to tag an item as they see fit, automate this process so it is transparent to the document owner.
For example, have an expert define metadata assignments for each SharePoint location. Then when an employee saves the document, the metadata gets applied automatically. Sure, this entails a lot of work, but it is work for a knowledge manager or subject matter expert, people who are highly motivated to get it right.
3. Find: Now, with content assigned (at least) some accurate metadata, it will be much easier to find people to find what they are looking for using conventional tools like Enterprise Search.
This may be a slight oversimplification and it may not completely solve the search problem. However, it is a huge step forward because it puts the human element in the hands of those who are motivated to solve the problem, while enabling everyone else to go about their business. And because this doesn’t require a change in people’s work patterns, it actually works.
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Where Do We Go from Here?
As is often the case, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That’s why the key to our modern search problems lies in the practice of an ancient librarian. By following Callimachus' principles of centralized storage, “automated” classification by an expert, and metadata-driven search, we can tame information overload and find the needles in the digital haystack. It's a timeless approach that proves some problems are truly universal, transcending centuries and civilizations. So, the next time you struggle to find that elusive file or document, remember we’ve been here before.
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