A synonym ring is a simple kind of controlled vocabulary that, as the name suggests, has controlled synonyms for concepts and nothing more. I have long included mention of synonym rings in presentations I’ve given with sections listing and describing controlled vocabulary types, and the synonym ring has appeared on…
Category: Controlled vocabularies
Taxonomy Licensing Interest
Just over a year ago I had blogged on the topic of Taxonomy Licensing. I explained that usually a customized taxonomy is best, but occasionally licensing a taxonomy is a option worth considering in certain circumstances: as a starting point to then modify, to serve as a single facet in…
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…
Taxonomies as Knowledge Organization Systems
A taxonomy is a kind of controlled vocabulary. A taxonomy is also a kind of knowledge organization system. So, the question is: what’s the difference, if any, between a controlled vocabulary and a knowledge organization system? When I first heard of “knowledge organization system” I perceived it as merely a…
Directories and Databases of Published Controlled Vocabularies
A source of published controlled vocabularies (taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, etc.) can be useful for different purposes. Sometimes, finding a vocabulary to license and reuse is the objective, whereas in other cases finding a vocabulary to consult as a source for confirming individual terms and relationships is the goal. Thus, different…
Vocabularies and Controlled Vocabularies
I have long considered a taxonomy as a particular, structured kind of controlled vocabulary. More recently, however, I have been hearing of “vocabularies” without the word “controlled” in front, although still for the purposes of information management and retrieval, which is cause to wonder: are controlled vocabularies and vocabularies the…
Taxonomies vs. Classification
A question had come up in one of my classes on how classification differs from taxonomies/thesauri. As part of an assignment to find thesauri on the web a student sought to find “how the Federal Government classifies its publications and was expecting to find a very elaborate Thesaurus … and…