There is increasing interest in organizations to “break down silos” of content and data. Silos may be different software applications, distinct web or intranet content, or merely different computer drives and folders. The goal is to enable search and retrieval across content that is stored in different content/document management systems…
Category: Enterprise taxonomy
Intranet and ECM Taxonomies
In designing a taxonomy for tagging and retrieving content in intranets or in an enterprise content management (ECM) system, there is a fundamental question of whether to strive for creating a single comprehensive taxonomy to be applied throughout the enterprise or to have multiple specific taxonomies for different sets of…
Engaging Others in Taxonomy Building
Whether you are building a new taxonomy from scratch or redesigning one based on an existing taxonomy, it’s important to engage other people in the process. There are two primary reasons: getting input from those who will use the taxonomy, so that it will better suit their needs getting buy-in…
Deviating from Taxonomy Standards
In my last blog post, I suggested that enterprise taxonomies need not follow the standards for controlled vocabularies and thesuari (ANSI/NISO Z39.19 guidelines and ISO 25964-1) to the same extent as “traditional” discipline taxonomies and thesauri. I say this cautiously, though. Standards should not be ignored for any taxonomy, but…
Enterprise Taxonomies vs. Traditional Taxonomies
A book that I have been reading (Structures for Organizing Knowledge: Exploring Taxonomies, Ontologies, and Other Schemas, by June Abbas, 2010) got me thinking about the comparison between corporate/enterprise taxonomies and other “traditional taxonomies”. I found it intriguing that Abbas presents corporate or “professional” taxonomies in the same chapter on…
Business Taxonomies
It’s difficult enough for professionals to come to a consensus on the definition of “taxonomy.” As for “business taxonomy,” it’s even worse. There are varying ideas of taxonomy, varying ideas of “business,” and varying ideas on what the connection should be, in addition to the scope and purpose. Is it…