Taxonomies

Taxonomy Purposes and Benefits

Taxonomies are structured, controlled sets of terms/tags/categories use to aid in the retrieval of content. They may be implemented in many different kinds of systems: content management systems, web content management systems, SharePoint, digital asset management systems, document management systems, records management systems, library systems, museum and archives systems, and proprietary database management systems. Taxonomies may also be integrated into a larger enterprise knowledge graph or semantic layer to support findability and discoverability of content in multiple systems or repositories and also link to data in various repositories through a connected ontology.

• • Browsing
    A hierarchical taxonomy for browsing guides users through a hierarchical arrangement of concepts, so they can find an appropriate topic of interest, without having to guess the exact name of the topic, or discovery a new category of interest, and from there can access content on that topic.

• • Filtering
    A taxonomy structured into facets, also called filters or refinements, allows users to dynamically restrict search result sets based on various criteria, aspects, or attributes, in combination.  Each facet has a controlled list of terms from which to select.
    Faceted taxonomies and hierarchical taxonomies can be combined.

• • Searching
    A taxonomy or controlled vocabulary with synonyms/variant terms can support search by matching user-entered search strings to taxonomy term concepts which are appropriately tagged to only and all relevant content. Documents with different wordings of a concept will not be missed, and documents with the same word in a different meaning will not be incorrectly retrieved. On a public website, a taxonomy may also aid in search engine optimization (SEO).

• • Tagging/Indexing
    Documents are more easily found if they are tagged with keywords, tags, or topics. But if the tags are inconsistent in their names, then tagging will be inconsistent. Two documents on the same topic, might receive different tags. By tagging only with terms on the approved, controlled list of taxonomy terms, documents can be consistently tagged and found.
    Tagging may be manual, automated, or semi-automated with human review.

A single taxonomy may serve multiple purposes; but sometimes distinct taxonomies work best.

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Taxonomy Consulting Services

Currently, while full-time employed, Heather Hedden is only offering services in the following:

• • Initial guidance on taxonomies
    Advising on what kind of taxonomy to develop, taxonomy design/re-design approach to take, and considerations for a specific use case, but without extensive research
  • Taxonomy review and evaluation
    Providing feedback and high-level recommendations for improvement of an existing taxonomy.

Previously, Heather Hedden has offered services in the following:

• • Taxonomy design and creation
    Consulting regarding the type of taxonomy/thesaurus, size and scope, breadth and depth, and partial or complete taxonomy development and build-out.
    Components of such an consulting engagement typically include:
    – content audit and analysis
    – interviews of stakeholders and sample users
    – review of existing or legacy vocabularies
    – use case definition
    – taxonomy type and structural recommendations
    – development and build out terms and their hierarchies (including adding synonyms, additional relationships, definitions/notes, and other attributes)
    – use-case-based taxonomy testing
    – taxonomy documentation and governance plan creation
    – recommendations for alignment with knowledge management initatives, content strategy, and search strategy

• • Metadata design
    Consulting on the design of a larger metadata model or strategy, of which a taxonomy is a part

• • Taxonomy revision
    Major or minor editing and enhancing of a taxonomy, involving  analysis of content and gathering input from users. Taxonomy testing assistance

• • Licensed/external taxonomy modification
    Taking an external taxonomy and modifying it for the current use case, involving both content analysis and user research to appropriately modify (add, delete, change terms) for the use cas

• • Taxonomy mapping/linking
    Creating links (as crosswalks) between sufficiently equivalent  or narrower-to-broader terms to enable one taxonomy to be used to access content tagged with another taxonomy

• • Taxonomy governance recommendations
    Drafting guidelines for taxonomy policies and maintenance, for indexing/tagging, and for taxonomy management system considerations

• • Ontology design
    Modeling and creating classes, semantic relationships, and custom attributes to extend and link taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies to support dynamic complex queries

These services apply to “taxonomies” in the broad sense, including all types of controlled vocabularies: hierarchical taxonomies, faceted taxonomies, search thesauri, full literature retrieval thesauri, and ontologies.

List of past projects and clients