I have long considered a taxonomy as a particular, structured kind of controlled vocabulary. More recently, however, I have been hearing of “vocabularies” without the word “controlled” in front, although still for the purposes of information management and retrieval, which is cause to wonder: are controlled vocabularies and vocabularies the…
The Accidental Taxonomist Blog
Taxonomies and Terminologies
The current specialties of taxonomy management and terminology management have different histories and serve different purposes, but they are in fact closely related, and taxonomies and terminologies can be linked to share knowledge. At the annual Taxonomy Boot Camp conference in Washington, DC, earlier this month I met a terminologist…
Taxonomies and Tables of Contents
A table of contents and a hierarchical taxonomy appear to be quite similar. In my last blog post I looked at taxonomies and indexes, and in the end concluded: “A taxonomy serves a purpose that is both, or something in-between, that of a table of contents and a back-of-the-book index.…
Taxonomies and Indexes
Taxonomies and indexes are similar in that they both help guide people to find desired information on a selected topic. While they could be searched, they are designed specifically to be browsed. The obvious difference is that taxonomies for end-users are arranged hierarchically (or by facets), and indexes are arranged…
Taxonomies for Indexing Images
It’s becoming more common to index images with taxonomy terms, instead of just text documents or instead of just keyword-tagging of images. A taxonomy for the subject-indexing of images need not be significantly different than a taxonomy for indexing textual documents, but other metadata differs, and the indexing activity is…
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…
Trends in Hierarchical Taxonomy Displays
Taxonomies connect users to content. So, how a taxonomy is displayed to users is very important in its effectiveness. This is a topic about which I gave a conference presentation back in 2011 and will present again next week. As I update my previous presentation, looking at some of 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…