Subjects, topics, index terms, keywords, controlled vocabulary, thesaurus, taxonomy. These all refer to an organized, precise way to find and retrieve desired information, where that information has been indexed to terms. Indexing content with subject terms can be manual or automated, but in either case the focus is on what…
Tag: Search
Auto-categorization and Taxonomies
Taxonomies and thesauri are only truly useful if their terms are appropriately indexed or tagged to content. My path to taxonomist had been as an indexer, so I always value the importance of human indexers. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that automated indexing, also called auto-categorization, is becoming increasingly common and…
Faceted Search vs. Faceted Browse
If you have considered different kinds of taxonomies, you have undoubtedly come across the faceted type. You can remember what a facet is by thinking of “face,” as in a multi-faceted diamond. Other names for facet include dimension, aspect, or attribute. It could be the set of characteristics that describe…