Standards for taxonomies are of two kinds:1) data models for interoperability and machine-readability, namely SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) published by the W3C, and2) best practices guidelines, which focus on thesauri but are relevant for taxonomies. These are ANSI/NISO Z39.19 and ISO 25964. The International Organization for Standardization will publish…
Category: Standards
SKOS-XL for Taxonomies
I recently posted about SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System). If you have read anything about SKOS, then you might have come across SKOS-XL (SKOS Extension for Labels) and wondered what that is. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released its recommendations for SKOS and SKOS-XL at the same time in 2009…
SKOS Taxonomies
Over the 26 years that I have been involved in controlled vocabularies, thesauri, and taxonomies, the biggest change I have seen in the field is the adoption of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) as a schema model and standard. If you are creating taxonomies exclusively within a single system (such…
Best Practices for Different Taxonomies
A question was recently posted to a group: “I’m wondering if anyone knows of a standard for designing taxonomies for industrial components (widgets).” So far, no one has replied. To clarify, taxonomies for different subject areas and different content don’t have different standards. Standards, whether for interoperability, such as SKOS,…
Vocabulary Management Issues
“Issues in Vocabulary Management” is the latest Technical Report (TR-06-2017) published by the National InformationStandards Organization (NISO), approved on September 25, 2017. I had the honor of serving on its working group, specifically on its subgroup for Vocabulary Use/Reuse. The most significant NISO publication for controlled vocabularies is ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005…
Standards for Taxonomies
Since “taxonomies” are rather loosely defined, standards specifically for taxonomies do not exist, but there are standards that are relevant to taxonomies. A taxonomy is a kind of controlled vocabulary, and there are standards for controlled vocabularies. There are also standards specifically for thesauri, a kind of controlled vocabulary with…
Adjective and Verb Terms in Taxonomies
Terms in a taxonomy are generally nouns or noun phrases, but this does not mean that a taxonomy cannot comprise adjectives or verbs instead. There may be differences of opinion on this, though. A thesaurus, another kind of controlled vocabulary, by contrast, is expected to follow standards (ANSI/NISO Z.39.19 or…
Avoiding Mistakes in Taxonomy Hierarchical Relationships
Perhaps the most important issue in designing a hierarchical taxonomy is creating hierarchical relationships between terms correctly. This makes the taxonomy intuitively easy to understand and navigate by all kinds of users, regardless of whether they have had any training on using a taxonomy. The basic principles of the hierarchical…
“The Accidental Taxonomist,” 2nd edition
Recently I was asked what I added to the newly published 2nd edition of my book, The Accidental Taxonomist. The additions and changes are summarized in the book’s preface, so I have decided to post the entire preface here, which follows: When I published the first edition of The Accidental…
Vocabularies and Controlled Vocabularies
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…