I enjoy teaching about taxonomies. The feedback I get from my students or workshop participants helps me improve my methods of communication, teaching, and consulting, and I learn about the varied implementations of taxonomies. The courses evolve and improve over time. I teach online courses, conference workshops, and corporate onsite…
Author: Heather Hedden
Taxonomy Sessions at the 2019 SLA Conference
SLA (Special Libraries Association) offered a good number of taxonomy-related sessions at this year’s annual conference, held June 14-18 in Cleveland, Ohio, thanks to the organizing efforts of its Taxonomy Division. There were enough taxonomy sessions so that there was always at least one session of interest at any time. SLA is a…
Knowledge Graphs and Ontologies
I’ve been hearing a lot about knowledge graphs recently. Corporate and academic implementations have been increasing in recent years, and now the taxonomy community is also taking an interest. Taxonomy software vendors are talking about knowledge graphs in webinars, blogs, and conferences, and knowledge graphs was on the list of…
Taxonomy Software Trends: Convergence and Visualizations
I recently looked more closely into current offerings of taxonomy software to prepare for an upcoming presentation at the SLA conference in Cleveland in June: “Taxonomy Tools and Tool Evaluation.” I will speak about the tools, and my co-presenter, Marti Heyman, will speak about how to evaluate them. I had last contacted…
Knowledge Modeling
I recently presented a webinar on “knowledge modeling.” I usually have spoken or written only of creating controlled vocabularies, or more specifically taxonomies, rather than creating knowledge models. Now, I am beginning to think of knowledge models and knowledge modeling. A knowledge model is not just a fancy buzzword for…
Taxonomy Building Steps
What are the steps to take when building a taxonomy? This question was posted not long ago to a discussion group of which I am member. I referred the person asking to view slides of one of my past presentations, “Everything You Need to Know to Start a Taxonomy from…
Indexes and Faceted Taxonomies
I recently completed a project of creating an index for a book. I had done quite a bit of freelance back-of-the-book indexing 2005 – 2013 but had not indexed a book in over four years. Since I also do taxonomy work, whenever I do indexing, I draw comparison between index…
Taxonomy Licensing
As a taxonomist who designs and creates taxonomies, I have always advocated creating a customized taxonomy for each implementation, which takes into consideration the particular set of content and type of users. Nevertheless, there are situations when licensing a taxonomy (or any kind of controlled vocabulary) created by a third…
Taxonomy Boot Camp, 2018, Report: AI and Taxonomies
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not new, but it is becoming more ubiquitous, and its applications are growing within other specializations in information management, knowledge management, and content management, including taxonomies. Hence the theme for this year’s Taxonomy Boot Camp conference (November 5-6, 2018, Washington DC) was “Bridging Human Thinking and…
Taxonomy Boot Camp London, 2018, Report
This October, for the third year in a row, I have enjoyed the opportunity to attend and present at Taxonomy Boot Camp London (TBCL). Similar in subject area scope, but with unique presentations, to its parent conference Taxonomy Boot Camp (TBC), usually held in Washington, DC, in November, I find…