Taxonomy Creation for Content Tagging
Education series of three weekly interactive online/virtual sessions
Format: Interactive Zoom meeting with lecture, exercises, and additional asynchronous Q&A
Organizer: Society for Technical Communication
Dates: Tuesdays, June 11, 18, and 25
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 pm PDT / 4:00 – 5:30 pm EDT / 21:00 – 22:30 BST
Price: $650, $350 for STC members (join STC for $240, for a total of $590), $280 for STC Gold members, $150 for STC student members (includes access to slides and recordings)
Course website link and registration
Description
Content authors understand the importance of their electronic content being easily found when needed by their users, and they might assist in the process by tagging their content. But are the tags sufficiently helpful? To support easy, comprehensive, and accurate search and retrieval of content tags should be based on controlled vocabularies or taxonomies. Creating simple taxonomies is not difficult, and most content or document management systems have built-in taxonomy management features, but creating good effective taxonomies requires understanding certain principles and best practices, which this 3-part workshop introduces. Technical communicators are often key stakeholders in the taxonomy creation process, and they could even take a leading role in taxonomy creation in the absence of a dedicated taxonomist.
Hands-on exercises include indicating the appropriate kind of controlled vocabulary, suitable alternative labels, and possible hierarchical relationships. A small group breakout session activity involves brainstorming a faceted taxonomy design.
Learning objectives and takeaways:
This three-week course aims to provide a solid understanding of taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies, their types, usage, and features. The principles of developing taxonomy concepts based on the content and user needs and creating appropriate relationships between concepts to guide users are the focus of the instruction. Participants should learn to follow taxonomy standards or best practices and implement a governance plan.
Attendees will learn:
- The differences and benefits of different kinds of tagging and categorizing of content
- What different kinds of controlled vocabularies there (taxonomy, thesaurus, classification scheme, term list, name authority) are and their suitability for different purposes.
- From where and how to come up with the concepts (terms) in a taxonomy/controlled vocabulary, including content sources, search logs, and user input
- Best practice for taxonomy concept labels (preferred and alternative) and the creation of hierarchical and associative relationships
- Principles of published taxonomy standards
- What to include in a governance plan that comprises both taxonomy maintenance guidelines and tagging policies
- The role and capabilities of taxonomy management tools
Course Agenda
Week 1:
Taxonomy Usage
- Introduction: Taxonomy as Categories and Tags; Taxonomies and Metadata
- Tagging with a Taxonomy
- Types of Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies
Week 2:
Taxonomy Creation
- Sources for Taxonomy Concepts
- Wording of Concept Labels; Preferred and Alternative Labels
- Relationships between Taxonomy Concepts
Week 3:
Taxonomy Management
- Taxonomy Standards
- Taxonomy and Tagging Governance
- Taxonomy Creation and Management Tools
