Documents tend to be produced by a fat client on an end-user OS, both of which imbue them with metadata and place them in a taxonomy.
Often both the metadata and taxonomy are of varying usefulness and accuracy as taxonomies are corrupted, folders duplicated and metadata rendered invalid by server processes. At least an end user can make a value judgement about the document and an enterprise search tool has something to index, meaning that from a list of apparently similar documents returned by a search query a user can make an educated guess as to the valuable item.
Once that valuable item has been located, the user might well share the location of the file with a distribution list...
...and that's curation picking up where enterprise search has failed.
When ERP data is considered, you'll find little metadata of value to the end user. Again, it would be a common scenario where an enterprise search returns possibilities and the end-user selects and publicises those of value to the wider community.
Manufacturing systems also generate very little metadata as they're designed around a single purpose, e.g., to log data in real-time. The metadata is limited to that which is necessary to make sense of the reading - you could argue it's not metadata at all. Clearly, in these instances enterprise search has nothing to offer here but expert end-users do; they can identify the key trends and highlight them to a wider community.
Of course, there's an network effect as more curation takes place; as more data is linked together by expert judgement, the value of the network increases exponentially with each link created.
Just as internet search engines are devalued by systematic metadata corruption (link stuffing, spamming, or any other 'black' SEO practice) so enterprise search is devalued by closed, proprietary or legacy systems producing unlinkable data.
And just as on the internet the value of curated content (usually) outweighs that of content returned by a search algorithm, so it will be in the enterprise, where the editors or curators are experts in the technical aspects of their business.
Once that valuable item has been located, the user might well share the location of the file with a distribution list...
...and that's curation picking up where enterprise search has failed.
When ERP data is considered, you'll find little metadata of value to the end user. Again, it would be a common scenario where an enterprise search returns possibilities and the end-user selects and publicises those of value to the wider community.
Manufacturing systems also generate very little metadata as they're designed around a single purpose, e.g., to log data in real-time. The metadata is limited to that which is necessary to make sense of the reading - you could argue it's not metadata at all. Clearly, in these instances enterprise search has nothing to offer here but expert end-users do; they can identify the key trends and highlight them to a wider community.
Of course, there's an network effect as more curation takes place; as more data is linked together by expert judgement, the value of the network increases exponentially with each link created.
Just as internet search engines are devalued by systematic metadata corruption (link stuffing, spamming, or any other 'black' SEO practice) so enterprise search is devalued by closed, proprietary or legacy systems producing unlinkable data.
And just as on the internet the value of curated content (usually) outweighs that of content returned by a search algorithm, so it will be in the enterprise, where the editors or curators are experts in the technical aspects of their business.
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