Conference Workshop: Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies

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Hedden Information Management

Conference Workshop: Taxonomy and Thesaurus Creation

Thursday, April 19, 2012
9:00 am - 4:30 pm
Bahia Resort Hotel, San Diego, CA
American Society for Indexing Annual Conference

Taxonomies are becoming popular for organizing information in business knowledge management, enterprise content management systems, and intranets. Are these taxonomies different from literature retrieval thesauri? How does one go about creating a taxonomy? This workshop will provide recommended best practices for how to create terms, relationships, and variants for different kinds of taxonomies or controlled vocabularies, and will also introduce different software tools for doing so.

Whether you need to create a taxonomy to organize information on a web site, classify information in a content management system, establish a controlled vocabulary for a periodical or database indexing project, or simply understand how to use taxonomies better, this workshop will get you on your way.

Conference site
Registration form (PDF)
Workshop registration is separate from the main conference registration. It is not necessary to register for the complete conference to attend this workshop.
Space is limited.

Cost:
$250 ASI members (prior to March 23); $300 (after March 23)
$300 nonmembers (prior to March 23); $350 (after March 23)

Workshop Outline

1. Introduction

In what various applications taxonomies and thesauri are used
Definitions of controlled vocabulary, thesaurus, taxonomy, and ontology
Deciding when categories or alphabetical organization should be dominant

2. Creating & Wording of Terms

Choosing the preferred term wording and format
Degree of pre-coordination vs. post-coordination
Term notes and attributes

3. Non-Preferred Terms

Types of non-preferred terms
How many non-preferred terms to create
Non-preferred terms for named entities

4. Creating Term Relationships

Broader term / Narrower term relationships
Associated term relationships
Specific relationships (for ontologies)

5. Thesaurus Display Options

Flat format, multilevel hierarchy, top term, and permuted/rotated

6. Hierarchies, Categories, and Facets

Creating hierarchies
Categories within controlled vocabularies, including authority files
Facets and faceted classification

7. Software

Overview of software for creating taxonomies and thesauri
MultiTes (including demo)
Other desktop software
Synaptica (including demo)
Data Harmony Thesaurus Master (including demo)

8. Sources for Terms

People as sources (owners, taxonomies, subject matter experts, users)
Content/material as sources
External reference sources

9. Project process

Project planning
Literature retrieval thesaurus project process
Enterprise taxonomy project process
Implementation of a controlled vocabulary
Maintenance of a controlled vocabulary

10. Related topics

Indexing & controlled vocabularies
Automated indexing & controlled vocabularies
Metadata & controlled vocabularies
Controlled vocabulary/taxonomy governance
Social tagging/folksonomies

11. Resources