Taxonomies are primarily for tagging content for what is about so that precise content can easily be found by users, who browse or search on the taxonomy terms. The types of content tagged and implementations of taxonomies are numerous. One growing area of taxonomy use is technical documentation. Technical documentation…
Category: Faceted taxonomy
Attributes in Taxonomies
When I had done consulting for ecommerce taxonomy clients years ago, and they would refer to the taxonomy facets for products as “attributes,” I felt that might be confusing, because I considered “attributes” something else: a characteristic like metadata of a taxonomy term or a feature of an ontology. I…
Customizing Taxonomy Facets
It has become more common to design faceted taxonomies than purely hierarchical taxonomies, as I discussed in a previous blog post. Faceted taxonomies integrate better with search, serve for filters and sorting, and provide a good user experience for both novices and subject matter experts. The main drawback is that…
Adjectives as Terms in Taxonomies
Taxonomies need not follow strict standards, but rather best practices. There are standards for thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19 and ISO 25964), and as taxonomies are similar to thesauri, it’s a good idea to follow thesaurus standards for taxonomy design to the extent applicable. According to thesaurus standards, terms should be nouns…
How Many Facets Should a Taxonomy Have
I’ve given a rule-of-thumb of 3-8 facets to create in a faceted taxonomy, but it’s not that simple, and there are various factors to consider. Creating facets is an assignment in the online taxonomy course I teach, and a student recently submitted good set of facets with sample terms, but…
When a Taxonomy Should not be Hierarchical
The traditional taxonomy is hierarchical. Thus, after it is determined a taxonomy is needed, often it is thought that it should be designed as a hierarchy. However, in practical terms, a hierarchical taxonomy might not be the kind that is appropriate. A taxonomy provides value (1) as a controlled vocabulary…
Indexes and Faceted Taxonomies
I recently completed a project of creating an index for a book. I had done quite a bit of freelance back-of-the-book indexing 2005 – 2013 but had not indexed a book in over four years. Since I also do taxonomy work, whenever I do indexing, I draw comparison between index…
Creating Subject Terms for a Faceted Taxonomy
Faceted taxonomies—those that allow users to limit or filter search results by selecting terms or attributes from each of several types/aspects—are becoming increasingly common. They are easy and effective for end-users with various abilities in searching. When it comes to designing facets, some of the facets and their terms for…
Subject Searching: Why a Taxonomy, Thesaurus, or Controlled Vocabulary Still Helps in the Age of Search
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…
Taxonomies for Filtering and Sorting
Taxonomies are versatile and may be used for various purposes. Originally designed to support hierarchical browsing of topics linked to content, they also may be implemented to support more accuracy in searching. Most discussions of taxonomies have focused on browse and/or search, but taxonomies may function in additional ways: enhancing…