About Heather Hedden

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About Heather

Hedden Information Management

About Heather Hedden

Heather Hedden is an information management professional, with a specialization in taxonomies, indexing, and search.

Before starting Hedden Information Management in 2004, Heather had over eight years’ experience in controlled vocabulary management and thesaurus development at Gale (Cengage Learning). Previously she worked as a periodical database indexer with Gale’s predecessor, Information Access Company. As senior vocabulary editor at Gale, she also developed taxonomies for web search interfaces. In more recent years, Heather worked as an employed taxonomist at the enterprise search software developer Viziant Corporation, First Wind Energy, and the consulting company Project Performance Corporation.

Heather teaches online courses in taxonomy creation both independently and through the Continuing Education Program of Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She has given numerous presentations and published many articles on taxonomies, indexing, and other information management topics and has recently written two books: The Accidental Taxonomist, published by Information Today, Inc. and Indexing Specialties: Web Sites, published jointly by the American Society for Indexing and Information Today, Inc. Heather also has a background in writing and editing, including reference book essays, abstracts, technical documentation, and magazine and newspaper articles.

Heather served as vice president and then president of the New England Chapter of the American Society for Indexing in 2005 and 2006 respectively. In 2005 she restarted the previously inactive Web Indexing Special Interest Group of the American Society for Indexing and served as its manager for two years. In 2007 she founded the Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies Special Interest Group if ASI, which she chaired for three years. Heather is also chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Taxonomy Division of SLA.

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