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…
Author: Heather Hedden
Taxonomy Standards
I’ve written book reviews before, but recently a journal asked me to review a standard. It was ISO 25964-1 Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies, Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval, which was published in 2011 by the International Organization for Standards. I was pleased to have the opportunity,…
Business Taxonomies
It’s difficult enough for professionals to come to a consensus on the definition of “taxonomy.” As for “business taxonomy,” it’s even worse. There are varying ideas of taxonomy, varying ideas of “business,” and varying ideas on what the connection should be, in addition to the scope and purpose. Is it…
Taxonomy Training Workshops
I give a workshop in creating taxonomies in two formats, full-day in person and online. The question sometimes comes up from prospective participants as to the differences. Since a full-day onsite workshop is coming up soon, this would be a good time to address the similarities and differences. Both workshops…
Taxonomy Merging or Mapping
Yesterday I gave a webinar presentation for members of Taxonomy Division of the SLA professional association, entitled “Taxonomy Updating, Combining, and Translating.” It was not the first time I presented on these topics and on the topic of taxonomy combining (mapping and merging) in particular. What was different this time…
From Folders to Facets
A recent taxonomy project I completed involved creating a new taxonomy for a financial services client who was migrating its internal content from shared drive folders to a SharePoint-based intranet, which also included automated indexing and a search engine (FAST). The new taxonomy will help support the search functionality, and…
Multilingual Taxonomies
We know that taxonomies help information-seekers browse or search for desired documents/information. Taxonomies provide the bridge between the user’s choice of words and the wording within the desired documents. But what if the user actually speaks a different language than that of the content? Documents can be translated (automatically if…
Taxonomies: Not New, but Growing
What’s new in the field of taxonomies? I am asked this question following my attendance at the two-day Taxonomy Boot Camp conference (October 31 – November 1, Washington, DC), the only conference dedicated to information management taxonomies. There is actually not a lot that is new in taxonomies, which…