Semantic Tagging on Historical Maps

TL;DR

This paper explores semantic tagging on online historical maps, showing it provides richer tag relationships without increasing user effort, with implications for web system design.

Contribution

It introduces a semantic tagging approach for historical maps, demonstrating its effects on tag quality and user workload through empirical testing.

Findings

Semantic tagging adds valuable tag relationships.

It does not increase user task load.

Provides both positive and negative tag relationships.

Abstract

Tags assigned by users to shared content can be ambiguous. As a possible solution, we propose semantic tagging as a collaborative process in which a user selects and associates Web resources drawn from a knowledge context. We applied this general technique in the specific context of online historical maps and allowed users to annotate and tag them. To study the effects of semantic tagging on tag production, the types and categories of obtained tags, and user task load, we conducted an in-lab within-subject experiment with 24 participants who annotated and tagged two distinct maps. We found that the semantic tagging implementation does not affect these parameters, while providing tagging relationships to well-defined concept definitions. Compared to label-based tagging, our technique also gathers positive and negative tagging relationships. We believe that our findings carry implications for designers who want to adopt semantic tagging in other contexts and systems on the Web.