Topic Maps, implemented through the ISO/IEC 13250 standard, are designed to facilitate the organisation and navigation of large collections of information objects by creating meta-level perspectives of their underlying concepts and relationships. This paper will examine the issues involved in using the standard to create Topic Maps that enable this objective. As a so far unproved new technology, the presentation aims to begin the process of establishing ‘good practice’ methods for creating and maintaining these meta-level perspectives. It asks some key questions: How do I differentiate between Topic concepts? Is there such a thing as a bad and obstructive Topic? What is the best way to make my Topic associations make sense? How should I organise my topics, occurrences, scopes, themes and maps? What is a good way of preserving the longevity of my Topic Map?

Topic Maps may well develop as an organisation’s fundamental perspective of their data, ranging from their core knowledge to their website. We can imagine Topic Map perspectives being used to organise, understand, present and drive any facet of their activity such as their research and development, management, services and marketing initiatives. In reality, the conceptualisation of meta-data from any given source is boundless, but it is inevitably prone to subjectivity either through direct human participation, or by the human creation of rules and patterns in automatic processes. Therein lies both its strength and weakness. One of the purposes of this paper is to examine the standard for mechanisms that may support a regularized and unambiguous approach to creating these perspectives. Where these mechanisms are absent or deficient, there needs to be some thought and discussion concerning additional means to support the authoring of them.

The paper will therefore seek to identify mechanisms within the standard that facilitate the creation of effective Topic Maps, ones that can withstand the rigors of multiple authorship, amendment and merging, yet still provide the author with the conceptual flexibility needed to create an effective representation of their data. Does the standard provide ways of answering the questions outlined above? If it does not, then we need to develop an additional framework to guide the creation of a good map and which enables the author to make that crucial differentiation between concepts, or that crucial expression of a relationship when and where they need to. What’s more, this framework needs to be understood and preserved by any subsequent author and possibly even by the application providing the interface to it. There is no doubt that the Topic Map standard has raw power, but if an organisation cannot see how to encapsulate it effectively as a means of expressing their data at a useful level, this power will be wasted. This presentation will endeavour to begin the discussion that should attempt to address this important aspect of Topic Map implementation.