Taxonomists and others whose work involves taxonomies have not been a unified professional community. Taxonomy development work is interdisciplinary, spanning different specializations, and different organizational functions, including the following: Information services taxonomies and thesauri, developed by those with a background in library/information science, thesauri, and cataloging, and possibly indexing Product/ecommerce…
Category: Taxonomists
Taxonomy Quotes
Taxonomies are very valuable, but not always easy to define, and they are described in various ways. They are also interdisciplinary, as taxonomies are developed by people in different fields for slightly different, yet similar purposes. I have heard various comments about taxonomies over the decades. In the earlier years…
Taxonomist Survey
In keeping with the title of this blog, it’s time to check in again to learn more about who taxonomists are and what they are doing. I conducted a survey of taxonomists (promoted through discussion lists, groups, and social media) in 2009 to gather information for my book, The Accidental…
Remote Taxonomy Work
Taxonomy design and development work can be done remotely. In fact, I’ve been doing taxonomy work remotely for the majority of my 24 years in the field, both as an employee and an independent consultant/contractor/freelancer. Now that information, knowledge, and content professionals are currently all working from home, this would…
Who Are Accidental Taxonomists?
Turning to the name of this blog, who are the accidental taxonomists? I sought an answer to this questions through some of the questions of a survey I conducted of taxonomists to gather information on the opening chapter of my book, and more recently I looked at the job titles…
Taxonomist Trends
Last month I conducted an online survey of 150 taxonomists (described in my last blog post). Although the results of which will be used in another publication, it is interesting to note at this time a few comparisons between the results of this survey with a similar one I had…
Taxonomist Survey
I had created a survey of taxonomists to gather some information for writing my book, The Accidental Taxonomist. It was mainly for Chapter 2: Who Are Taxonomists? With the word “taxonomist” in the title, I had to write something about taxonomists, and not just about taxonomies, and this was the…
Varied Taxonomy Uses and Taxonomist Functions
Someone asked me recently if taxonomies were applicable to some marketing analytics he was pondering. I was not sure without further discussion. The interesting thing about taxonomies is that they have such varied uses. Perhaps because there is no single dominant use of taxonomies, taxonomists have to go into long…
How to Find a Taxonomist
The need for well designed taxonomies is growing, and the number of people becoming skilled in designing and creating taxonomies is growing. But finding the right taxonomist at the right time and place is still difficult, whether contract/temporary or permanent. If you are looking to hire a taxonomist, these are…
Taxonomy Trends and Future
What are the trends in taxonomies, and where is the field going? The future of taxonomies turned out to be a unifying theme of last week’s annual Taxonomy Boot Camp conference, in Washington, DC, the premier event in taxonomies, from its opening keynote to its closing panel. “From Cataloguer to…