Mapping Sources for a CI Project

One important step in setting up a CI project is to work out where to look for the information you will need to meet your objectives.  A good way to do this is to draw a map of the sources that are going to be useful.

An example of a generic map is given below as a guideline to help you.  You can use this framework to ensure that you have covered all of the types of source that are relevant to your CI project.

Personalize the map

The first step is to personalize the map so that it fits your own CI project.  There are three ways in which you can adapt the generic map:

• check the types of source

You may find that for your needs you don’t need to track social media sites, but you may want to monitor sites that give very detailed finanicial information.  Look over the types of source above and adapt it to meet your needs: add or remove types keeping your CI objectives in mind.

• decide how important each source is for your project

You may decide that for your particular CI project, you need only to have an overview of what’s happening in the national press.  In this case you may choose to track only one or two national papers.  Alternatively, you may decide that you need to track all the national papers, and also some of the larger regional titles.  There are possibly some types of sources that you choose not to follow at all for a particular project.

• fill the types of source

Once you have defined the types of sources you are looking for and you have weighted the types of source, the next step is to list specific sources you need to complete your map.  If I know, for example, that I need to monitor the business press and that this type of source has a relatively low weighting then I can list The Financial Times and the Financial Press Gazette and this might be enough to satisfy my needs. 

Keep in mind that you can also use Digimind itself to fill your types of source using

• The URL store
• The Digimind Content Factory
• The Source Discovery feature
• and Keyword searches

Mapping sources in this way will help you in two ways:

1. After you have mapped your sources, you are then able to identify gaps in your coverage and work to find sources to fill these.
2. Knowing the kind of source you will use to get information will guide you when writing and refining the keywords for a query.